


Tinkering and Tampering: Of the Wizarding Variety

by Aelys_Althea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble Collection, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Generally Unlinked Works - For Now, Idle Ponderings, One Shot Collection, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2018-11-18 19:32:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 31,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11297349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelys_Althea/pseuds/Aelys_Althea
Summary: A collection of Harry Potter related drabbles, each less than 5000 words. From spellbinding magic to tales of woe, witchery and manifestations and all the slivers in between...





	1. Could A Dog But Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd missed so much. So many years, and never to be retrieved again.   
> Given the chance, brief as it was, he couldn't miss his godson this time.

The raucous bellowing of students, of stomping feet and cackling laughter and boos as often as cheers, echoed throughout the stand above him. Strange, that less than three hundred of those very students could produce such a riot of noise.

But the dog wasn't thinking of that.

The toot of a whistle sounded, followed by the ripple of a groan. Accusations were flung, the words lost to the wind and the game and the excitement, cries of "Unfair!" and "What a call!" and "Come on, Hooch! What was that?"

But the dog didn't hear that either.

Slinking through the darkness of the stands, padding up the steps, he kept his ears pricked, nose to the ground, knees crouched. He was a shadow slipping between shadows, a wraith of only a whisper of sound. Not that anyone would have heard him should he utter any sound; Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had always been quidditch-centric. Always. Even back in the days when…

The dog paused as another whistle sounded, this time followed by such an outburst of excitement that he almost thought the game had been won. That it had finished, was over, was _missed_. But then another toot, another outburst of student jubilation, and the echoes of competition initiated anew. A goal, perhaps. Or a remarkable defence. That Gryffindor Keeper was something special; the dog considered that even were he an ordinary dog he would be capable of discerning that much.

Climbing the last few steps, he paused at the entrance to the grandstands. The doorway breathed grim light into the darkness within, the gloomy Scottish weather not quite bright but illuminating nonetheless. The sounds were louder, here – shouts, more tooting whistles, words and babble and chatter more discernible – and the smells of sweat and excitement wafted thickly into the dog's nostrils. But he couldn't see. Not over the protective barrier of wooden balustrade, not upon the pitch or the game battled before him. A player in red and gold zipped past, but disappeared in a moment. That was all the evidence of game he was afforded.

It frustrated the dog. He grumbled beneath his breath at the annoyance, but a wasted trip it was not. What kind of Dog would he be to turn tail and slink away at such a trivial barrier?

Dropping into a crouch once more, he instead crept – silently, always silently – towards the back of the stands. Around the stairwell and beyond. The shadows were darker there, the smell of encroaching winter deeper and tinged with the dampness of wood just slightly mouldy, but the dog didn't care. He'd smelt far worse in his time, and often upon himself.

And he climbed. Clambering up the ladder of stilts, of beams and through timber walls that were less walls and more of a patchwork of holes and wooden slats, he ascended the back of the stands. The passage would have been far easier had he hands rather than paws but…

The dog had never begrudged his canine status. Many times it had been a blessing.

The air was clearer, sweeter, crisper when he alighted upon the top of the stands. The very top, at that, upon the stretch of seating absented of students. The wind nipped at his ears like the fractious prancing of playful puppies, and just as he would those puppies he ignored them. He ignored the spread of warmly-wrapped Gryffindors below him, too, their waving, flailing hands and bellows of triumph for nothing in particular as far as the dog could discern. They were turned away from him, unaware, and so beneath his notice, too.

For he was discerning. From his perch, as much hidden by the shadows that surrounded him as the height of his placement, he watched the game. The dog watched as the ruddy quaffle soared between players, was scooped from the air, was battered from beneath an arm that held it too loosely. He watched as a bludger soared cringingly close to a Chaser's head, only to be redirected a moment later by a redheaded boy with a wicked swing. Brooms swooped, players dove, and goals were scored. Like a presiding vulture, the grey-clad referee drifted overhead, whistle tooting every other second in ear-splitting shrieks.

But the dog didn't watch the vulture. He saw but didn't watch the beaters and bludgers, the Chasers and Keepers and their quaffle. His gaze was affixed upon a single, small figure that swooped and dove like a darting hummingbird, weaving about the pitch as though it were his playground.

The boy was breathtaking to watch. A real natural on a broom. Images, memories, and feelings so strong that the dog could almost taste them welled within him, and he stared. He stared and didn't blink, didn't look away for even a second from the spectacle being performed with the fluidity of a dancer before him.

He was so like James. Harry, little Harry, with his hummingbird-dives and dexterity, that _naturalness_ , so like James. Different, and yet so, so similar.

Had he the lips to do so, Sirius Black would have smiled.


	2. Scars of War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Battle of Hogwarts was a disaster of chaos and brutality. For Harry Potter, it was a fight for survival he barely achieved.  
> For others, the fight was even harder to win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this is a bit of a grim one. A hint of darkness and morbidity and insinuated minor character death. Not quite M rating, I don't think, but this is just a precaution.

He came out of nowhere. Teeth bared, claws extended, his eyes glowing in the darkness.

She didn't stand a chance. Like so many others, it was over the second he struck.

The Battle of Hogwarts was mayhem. It had started out as impossible and grew more impossible by the second. The Death Eaters battered at the castle's defences. Spells erupted along the stone walls, crumbling the brickwork like dust. The very ground seemed to shake beneath the assault.

And that was before their defences fell.

The night-darkened sky was alight with enchantments. Red, white, green, gold – a myriad of colours that crashed and burned and showered sparks onto the courtyard, the grounds, the fighters below. Spells illuminated dark-robed figures and scrambling students, fleeing Order members, professors and all those in between.

Suits of armour creaked to life.

The castle groaned in protestation, trembling upon its foundations.

Invisible shields from professors and foundations alike springing into existence, only to splinter and falter.

There were creatures, shadowy and twisted and indiscernible. There were ghostly conjugations – spells or ghosts or something in between – and it was terrifying. And the _noise_. Explosions were one horror, but the screams. The crying. The gurgles of pain that fizzled into nothingness or –

Or worse than that, the absence of sound entirely. A sharp blast, a flash of green, and nothing but the thump of a body hitting the ground.

The younger students had been evacuated. Through the Room of Requirement, through the Hog's Head, and _away._ She hadn't run. In the midst of utter terror, heart seizing in a tug-of-war between adrenaline and stark panic, she asked herself why. She'd asked herself time and time again.

Why hadn't she run when she still could?

_Why hadn't she run?_

She fired with desperation at a Death Eater, robes billowing black and ominous. Her spell struck, and something like triumph, something also like fear, coursed through her. Then she was running, was fleeing, and turning and firing again. Anything to fight – to flee – to _win_ because that was what they had to do.

To fight.

To win.

That was all she knew anymore. Somewhere she'd been struck, she could feel it as a burn down the length of her arm, but she couldn't think that. She couldn't let herself. Once, such refusal of acknowledgement would have been impossible. A forgotten once, and at that time the greatest threat she'd ever faced had been a glaring Potions professor.

In the spread of the courtyard, amidst, fighting, firing, blasts, terror so tangible she could smell it, he came for her. Why her she would never know, but like a magnet drawn to a lodestone, his yellowed gaze fastened upon her. His yellow eyes glared, but he smiled. She caught a glimpse of him, and she was frozen, a feeble rabbit caught in the glaring hypnosis of a rattler.

Sounds collided around her, spells clapped and echoes rebounded. And she stared. The wand in her hand was useless; some innate part of her knew that much.

Then he charged. Like a beast, he leapt in strides as much as he bounded on all fours. He crashed through a staggering Death Eater. He soared over a body – a dead body, _dead_ – and skidded before leaping forth once more.

Half a step backwards was all she could manage. Half a step, and then he was upon her.

The ground was hard. Her head cracked. The weight that landed upon her chest forced her breath loose. The shrill scream that demanded to be liberated was silenced. She was crushed, beaten, slammed, and somewhere she noticed that her wand was flung from her grasp.

The werewolf slashed at her face with dark claws stained bloody black in the spell-illuminated light, splitting skin. Teeth gnashed, a sharp tear ripping at her chin, her throat. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear but for a discordant chorus of shouts and magical blasts and the _thump-thump-THUMP_ of her heartbeat all too loud in her ears. And then –

"NO!"

A voice screamed, a saviour, and in the blast of a colliding spell the weight was suddenly gone from atop her. The claws stopped clawing, the teeth stopped gnashing - her breath stuttered, but the heaviness, the _creature_ , was gone. She blinked, stared, couldn't see. Everything felt – _was_ – distant, her fingers a light-year away yet still closer than her toes, the sky a sheet of blackness. Or were her eyes closed? She didn't know. The battle still raged, she could hear, roaring through the ragged stutters of her heartbeat. Or was the roaring simply her ears?

Something… something hot stung her cheek. Hot and dripping and… and _torn_. A feeble voice whimpered in her head, a voice far quieter than the terror and the panic and the urge to fight or run or both. A voice that quavered, sobbing that her face, her _face_ , had been ripped to shreds, an injury the likes of which she'd seen all too much of since the battle had begun.

And that battle still raged. Distant now, but continuing. That feeble voice, through the thumping and the blasting and the heat that welled into something that was far worse than simply heat:

_How… how ugly… such a scar to the face will be…_

Lavender Brown gasped. When her breath released, it was in an escaping exhalation, and none in the chaos heard its final warbling sigh.


	3. For A Little Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Harry was thrust into a broken family, a family that cared less for him than would a stranger in unfamiliar skin, there was a fight. A further breaking of a family. And the birth of one anew.

"Disgusting! You abhorrent child!"

"Dad –"

" _My_ daughter? To think that _my_ daughter would do such a thing?"

"Dad, please, it's not like we're –"

"I withstood it. I withstood knowing so little about him. I didn't object when he came for dinner and said little enough about who the bloody hell he was. I held my _bloody_ tongue when he stayed the night under _my roof_ when you came home from work all but collapsing after 'a job' that I _still_ know nothing about. Again and again, I've put up with it. But _this_?"

Lily wasn't crying. She couldn't let herself, and not because she didn't want to. She couldn't because for this… this was so wrong. Not tears as much as anger welled within her. "Dad, it's not like that. We're going to get married and we're –"

"Has he proposed? Has he? Where's the ring? What're his plans?"

"Dad –"

"Does he have a house? Is his job – the job I know _nothing_ about – stable enough to support you? _Can_ he support you?"

"Yes!" she burst out. "Yes to all of that! The house, the job, the – the –! And I can support myself, Dad! I can –"

"With a bloody _baby_ , Lily? Nineteen, unmarried and with a _baby?_ "

Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears. The walls seemed too close and the hallway, the span between herself with her back pressed against the front door and her father looming tall and quivering with rage, seemed somehow smaller. Her mother watched from behind him, shaking her head, lips pinched. Petunia watched too, her own lips as pinched as their mother's and distaste hollowing her cheeks.

All of them. All of them thought she was in the wrong. Because of James, because of their youth…

Because of their baby.

Lily wrapped a hand around her belly. It had yet to swell, but she could feel it. She felt her baby, her anonymous child, and her heart ached with a love the likes she'd never before felt for anything. Never for any _one_. And her father was angry? He was hateful?

"It'll work out," she said, because she truly believed that. "It will."

"Nineteen and with a _baby_ ," her father growled again. He spoke the word as though it were a curse rather than a blessing. "Irresponsible. That my daughter – _my daughter_ – could be so – so –"

Whatever he'd been trying to say fizzled into bluster. His face reddened, lips flapping, and in any other moment Lily might have even thought his voicelessness was amusing. Not then, however. Not then.

She raised her chin. Shame settled within her gut, but for the fact that she'd so upset her father rather than for the act that caused the upset itself. Her baby – her child, her angel, _hers_ – wasn't worthy of guilt. Not from her father and certainly not from Lily herself.

"I'm sorry, Dad," she said, and even to her own ears she sounded insincere. Anger was all that rose within her. Hot and fierce and spitting with rage of her own. "I'm sorry that you're disappointed in me and I'm sorry that I didn't get married and settle down before starting a family. I'm _sorry_."

"And so you damn-well should be –"

"But I don't regret it." Lily raised her voice in a snap. She saw her mother twitch, saw Petunia flinch, but barely spared them a second of her notice. "I love James, and I love our baby."

"You –"

"And it might have been a little earlier than we'd expected, but it feels right, Dad."

"You would just –"

"We're going to have a family." Now the tears were welling, but they were hopeful rather than distressed, loving rather than ashamed. They were good tears, and she wouldn't let them fall. Not before her father. "Me and James and our baby – we're a family, Dad. We will be."

"Not under my roof," her father growled. He seemed to swell even taller than he had been, shrinking the hallway further and all but blocking out Lily's mother and sister. "Not under my roof. If that Potter boy could be so – so _irresponsible_ as to get you pregnant –"

"The participation was bloody-well mutual, Dad!"

"- then he's not stepping foot in my house. And you," her father jabbed a finger at her, his eyes narrowing until they were barely slits in his flushed face, "will not be seeing him. Not again."

Lily's retort died upon her lips. All words failed her as the order struck her like a blow to the face. "W…what?"

Her father's lips thinned, drawing into a grim smile. Not satisfied but definitely determined. "That Potter boy is not welcome here anymore. Not after what he's done to you. Not unless he gets his act together and – and takes some responsibility for his actions!"

Lily stared. Her hand clutched at her belly once more and her jaw tightened. Anger welled within her once more, of a different kind this time. A slow, yawning fury, deep and black and hateful. Her chin rose further and as she stared at her father, at her hidden mother and sister that said nothing in objection, she _hated_ them.

"Fine," she said curtly. "If he's not welcome here… then neither am I."

Turning on her heel, she left the house. Stunned silence – or was it acceptance? – followed after her, and she didn't care. Lily didn't care for any of it anymore. She didn't glance back as she strode down the cobbled path from her house, between perfectly manicured lawns and snipped shrubs. Not once did she look back.

It was the last time Lily Evans saw her parents.

* * *

"But what will we do? Can we even possibly manage?"

"We will."

"What if they're right? It's stupid, I know they're not, but – what if they are?"

"They're not. We'll be fine. I have money."

"Is it enough?"

"It's enough. I have Godric's Hollow, too. You know that. Mum and Dad left it to me."

"But… it'll just be the two of us. Just the two of us and –"

"How can you say that? Of course it's not just us two."

"But –"

"We'll have Sirius, right? He'll be the worst godfather in the world, but we'll have him. Right, Sirius?"

"Right."

"And Remus, too. He'll help us out with everything that we don't know. Need to know how to change a nappy and he's your man."

"That you have so much faith in me is commendable, James, especially given that I've had absolutely no experience with children."

"It's deserved. If nothing else, you'll make a mean guard dog."

"I think you're confusing me with Sirius."

"Woof."

"Shut up, Padfoot."

"And Peter, too. He might not be the most proactive person around kids but it doesn't take a genius to keep an eye on a sleeping baby. Right, Peter?"

"James, I… I don't know if I can –"

"You're not worming your way out of this one, Wormtail. We're a family and we're sticking together. You got that, Lily? All of us together. We're a family, alright?"

"… a family."

"All of us together. And hell, even if we fail, the entirety of the Order of the Phoenix is going to be looking over our shoulder the whole time. You really think McGonagall is going to let us raise a wayward son?"

Laughter rippled through the room, and not a one of their little family didn't add their voices to the chorus. A family. A real family.

For that moment, at least, Lily was content.

* * *

She was tired. So, so tired, and in some ways that weariness was worse than the pain.

Or maybe that was the painkillers themselves. As soon as the drugs were administered and the smothering drowsiness settled upon her, the pain had become almost manageable. It was the weariness that was harder to fight now.

But fight she did. She had to. Nothing in the world seemed more important to her than seeing _him_.

The room was cluttered with too many people that something in the back of Lily's mind told her wasn't _that_ many. Still, it felt crowded. Her bed was illuminated by too many lights – one, but still too many – and the sound of voices were too loud. Murmuring, but still too loud. She wanted peace. She wanted silence.

But most importantly, she wanted _him_.

"Where -? Where is he?"

It was a struggle to prop herself up. The drowsiness, the dizziness – she might not have been able to feel the pain but for a distant, tearing throbbing, the work of suppressors masking the worst of it, but the weariness was debilitating. Even so, Lily struggled, and she had always been a stubborn person. She forced herself into sitting, wavering on trembling arms, and peered through the midst of too many people.

Where was he?

It was James who brought him. James, as pale and exhausted and weathered as Lily felt, his hair even messier than usual and his glasses askew, but her James who was smiling nonetheless. He held his arms out awkwardly before him, the tension keeping them aloft causing them to shake. Or maybe that was from fear. Maybe it was from wonder. Maybe it was all of that combined.

In the hammock of his arms, wedged between the crooks of his elbows, Lily saw him. Her eyes were bleary, her head swimming, but she wouldn't have missed him for the world. She _saw_ him, and he was…

"He's beautiful," James said. His words caught in his throat, stifled to a choked whisper, but they somehow reached Lily's ears with more comprehensibility than those of the doctor and nurses and midwives.

Her gaze settled upon _him_ as her arms reached, trailing cannula and blankets and shaking with need. She'd lost precious moments to oblivion in the birthing. She couldn't spare any more now. She _needed._

The buddle in James' was small. So small, and wrapped like a cocoon in soft, multihued blankets. The circle of his face was ruddy and wrinkled, barely a clutch of thin, sparse hairs matted to his forehead. Was that a frown? He was really frowning, his mouth twisted in a grimace that only added more wrinkles to his blotched skin in an impression that was almost alien in ugliness.

And yet he was perfect. James was entirely right; ugly had never been more beautiful.

The weight of her baby in her arms was the only thing that had ever felt wholly and immediately right in Lily's life. She was tired, so, so tired, and wanted desperately to sleep. But the need to hold, to clutch to her chest a little wrinkled creature that was entirely hers, was more important. More precious.

"Our baby," Lily said, and she didn't realise she was crying until she spoke. Crying, finally crying as she hadn't since she'd left her parents. Crying – and she'd never felt happier in her life. "James, he's our _baby_."

James curled his arms around her shoulders, but she couldn't glance towards him. The doctor and nurses and midwives still spoke, but she didn't hear them. Her eyes blurred as she stared down at the angel in her arms, but it hardly mattered.

Nothing truly mattered – that they were too young to have a baby, that they were in the midst of a war, that Lily hadn't and likely never would see her family again. None of that mattered, because she had her James and she had her baby. She had her –

"Harry," she whispered, and somehow it came out a sob. "Our little Harry."

Lily didn't need a family who no longer needed her. She had one of her own, and it was completely and utterly perfect.


	4. A Sudden Taste For Redheads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, it was love at first sight. Others... for Fleur, instant rapture had never been her style. Luckily enough for her, it hadn't quite been Bill's, either.

She was beauty.

She was grace.

She was… certainly terrified. But she would never let anyone know. She could never let anyone see. Aloofness was a well-worn cloak for a Veela, and she had a reputation to uphold.

When the final scores sprung forth, when the horns sounded and the flood of students rushed from the stadium, Fleur kept herself shrouded in her cloak. It was as much a comfort as it was a necessity. At the shabby little school so vastly different from her own, in the poorly tended grounds with their hastily erected arena, she wore her cool.

It had never been so hard before, but then Fleur had never faced a dragon before that moment, either.

The raucous students far beneath her age battered with bellowing cries at her ears. Her fellow students, the representatives of Beauxbatons, huddled round her in a loose circle. They created a protective shield for the impossibility of her formal mask sliding loose. It wouldn't happen, of course, but Fleur registered detachedly that it was to her benefit.

Maybe. Veela didn't need support of such, but still. It helped.

Madame Maxime appeared beside her as soon as the scores unravelled and the flood of students raced to descend from the stadium steps in a flurry of pounding feet. She loomed tall above her, and the cast of her shadow was somehow comforting. "You did well, Miss Delacour."

That was it. That was all. A simple compliment: minimal at best, but resounding. Fleur, beneath her aloofness, felt something unwind just slightly in her chest. She inclined her head, dropping her gaze from her headmistress' unblinking stare. There was too much to that stare — not just the competitiveness that had welled within them for weeks, but what lay alongside it. A softness. A gentleness.

"Of course I did," Fleur said shortly. Then in a sweeping turn — it looked good; she knew it did — she strode away from the arena in long-legged steps. Like a gaggle of obedient geese, her Beauxbatons classmates flooded alongside her. Heads held high, eyes heavy-lidded, scanning any that dared to step too close. A shield, yes, and one that Fleur hadn't asked for, to be sure. But in this instance the barrier was appreciated.

She saw the Hogwarts students, a mess of dark robes and mismatched neckties, shoes that matched even less, and ignored them. She inclined her head towards the Durmstrang champion where he stood in his own pool of comrades; true, the back-thumping and hearty cries of support and appreciation weren't quite to her taste, but she could appreciate that Krum himself had performed well. Not as good as she, perhaps, regardless of what the judges thought, but good. Diggory was the same. A simple nod, a meeting of gazes. She liked Diggory. He was upstanding for an Englishman.

Unfortunately, an Englishman he was.

Potter was another story. When the cries of dragons roaring their fury into the sky began to fade, Fleur passed him. He was a small boy. His hair was terrible, his overlarge glasses just as bad. The ring of red-headed witches and wizards surrounding him were even more reminiscent of geese than those that flowed around Fleur, constantly in step. Potter glanced up as she passed, as the Beauxbatons students made their presence known with silent, synchronised steps. He would be a fool to overlook them, for Madame Maxime herself was impossible to ignore, not to mention Fleur herself. People looked at Veela. It was how it should be.

Satisfaction fluttered in Fleur's chest as it always did as each of the red-headed attendants glanced towards her. The typical arrangement: girls blinking then scowling, the boys and young men blinking then staring with eyes all but popping from their skulls. They looked ridiculous and Fleur… well, she didn't love it, but it was certainly satisfying. It helped to ease the crazed thumping of her heartbeat in her chest that wouldn't bother her so long as she simply ignored it.

"Congratulations, Fleur," Potter called.

Fleur's lip twitched. She couldn't quite help it. Foolish boy. Presumptuous, even. What kind of a child — for he was no more than a child, regardless of what the Triwizard attendants claimed — addressed a superior by their first name. The presumptuousness.

And yet a twitch was all she managed, a glance that was the perfect balance between dismissal and a glare. She didn't even have the chance to revel wholeheartedly in the women's disgruntlement or boys' adoration, because the most appallingly accented French assaulted her with no consideration for pronunciation. "Tu as très bien fait, Mademoiselle Delacour."

Sniffs immediately sprung around her. Twitters of horror, and even a gasp from one of the boys behind her. Fleur flickered her glance towards the red-headed young man standing alongside Potter.

He was tall. His hair was too long. He looked like he had an earring in one ear that was crafted from a fang, which was utterly disgusting. And his French. Better that he not have attempted at all.

And he was smiling.

Fleur instantly disliked the man. She'd never had a fondness for red-headedness, and even if his smile did become him, she didn't like the rest of the ensemble. Sniffing in turn with her companions, she shrugged higher her cloak of reserve.

"I speak English perfectly well, sir," she said, and even if it wasn't true: it was close enough. Fleur was good at everything. Even the things she wasn't technically good at. "You do not need to be butchering my language in your attempt to communicate."

The plump, curly-haired woman at the man's side gasped in a different kind of way to how the Beauxbatons student had. The red-headed girl glared and the one with the bushy brown hair rolled her eyes so pronouncedly that Fleur thought she could almost hear it. That was satisfying. It helped to soothe Fleur's discomfort further. Far better than the smiling man.

"I apologise," the man said, and he spoke with real warmth. Almost familiarity. "Sorry. I just wanted to congratulate you as well, Miss Delacour."

Fleur stared at him. The red-haired man with the disgusting fang earring and the overlong hair. He'd named her with respect at least, but still.

Still.

"Thank you," she said. Then, with a further inclination of her head towards Potter — he was staring, just like the other boys, just like the man infuriatingly wasn't quite so much — she continued with her gaggle of students up the slope away from the arena.

"That was appalling," one of her fellow students said with a sigh.

"It hurt my ears," another groaned.

Madame Maxime didn't scold them, but Fleur couldn't help but spare her fellows a glance. She frowned at Audrey at her side as the girl rolled her own eyes in a far more contained manner than the bushy-haired girl had. "Still your tongue and show some respect."

No one said a word after that. Not a single word, or a sniff, or an overloud exhalation. Fleur didn't much care for red-heads or Englishmen, but he'd - they'd congratulated her. Respect should be paid in turn.

Even if it did come in rather odd forms.

* * *

"So you didn't like me?"

"I did not say that."

"I'm pretty sure you did. You didn't like me."

Fleur glanced up Bill's chest, twisting her head to peer up at him through the semi-darkness of their bedroom. In such a light, the scars upon his face were almost invisible.

Pushing herself up onto her hands, she stared down at him instead. The curls of her hair pooled over her shoulders and she knew she was beautiful. She knew she appeared distant, and perfect, and that even to Bill who had always demonstrated a modicum of constraint in the face of her Veela charm, she was as attractive as a magnet to a lodestone.

He stared at her. He smiled. He closed his eyes when she traced a finger across the scars making patterns of the skin across his cheeks. "No," she said. "Maybe I did not."

"Not then."

"Not then. Not yet."

Bill's smile widened. Fleur could feel the warmth of it more than she could see it, and as it always had, that warmth somehow managed to melt just a little of the detached coldness within her. How he did that, she would never know.

He captured her hand in his own, and it was warm, and large, and just slightly calloused. That warmth had always been a part of Bill. "Not yet."

"Things change."

"That they do."

Fleur knew that, perhaps better than anyone. She'd never been fond of red-heads, but change had made an exception to the rule. Just this once. Just this one time.

"That they do."


	5. A Harsh Reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the war, everything should have gone smoothly - shouldn't it? Rightness restored and the burdens and hardships relinquished. Weren't they?  
> And yet, despite the 'well and good', some impacts take time to dawn. Some even years. Harry Potter discovered that in the hardest way possible.

Grimmauld Place had never been a welcoming abode. From the darkness of the narrow doorway to the gloomy, equally narrow windows forever smothered in closed drapes, every inch of its exterior breathed of deterrence. And that was to those who could see it.

Grimmauld Place hadn't been seen in years. Not even by the Wizarding world.

Lily took a deep breath as she stood before the doorway. The towering house, squeezed between numbers ten and fourteen, had been vanished for years. Decades, even, and no one had cared. Or, more likely, no one had noticed. Few enough people had known of Grimmauld Place anyway. To say it was a secret, a hidden truth…

It wouldn't be incorrect, exactly, but neither was it entirely accurate.

Lily didn't knock upon the door. She didn't ring the antique doorbell, nor raised her voice to request entrance. Something of the building, of Grimmauld Place itself, forbade such a violation. It forbade entrance, even, but Lily -

She had a purpose. For a house that hadn't existed, had hidden, to suddenly appear when she most needed it? Memories of school days long gone, of her youth and crossing before the empty wall of the seventh floor corridor in wait for the Room of Requirement rose to mind.

Lily opened the door. The creak was ominous, a sharp contrast to the idling putter of cars on the footpath behind her, the distant chatter of pedestrians and the tooting of even more distant horns in the further distance. The moment Lily stepped inside, it was as though a blanket had fallen over her ears, muffling, as thick as the dust that immediately flooded her nostrils. The door closed with an equally creaking swing behind her and the sounds disappeared entirely.

It was dark in that hallway. That narrow, gloomy hallway, without even a candle of overhead light for illumination. Breathing deeply – and nearly coughing for the inhalation of yet more dust – she crossed the threshold. Her feet, steps that she only realised were tiptoeing when she glanced towards them, were soundless upon the thick rug. Dust and more dust. The rug itself was grey, a mask of the indiscernible colour it had once been.

Blank walls, the slight discolouration of where had once sat portraits the only decor. Empty air but for the motes that drifted in lazy twirls, not quite visible but felt. And silent. So silent it was almost eerie. Lily swallowed, stepped - tiptoed - further inside. Silent but for a distant groan that was felt rather than heard. The house itself seemed to sigh beneath the weight of its emptiness and loneliness.

Lily passed down the hallway. She paused at a door, peered into a room, but… empty. Utterly empty, with not a shroud of sheet over furniture. Empty but for the dust. Another step, another glimpse into a room, and more emptiness presented itself. How lonely. How unutterably lonely.

The hallway was bare, steps grey from dust or age or both or neither, but slightly illuminated. Lily didn't know by what, could only hazard a guess that the faint illumination hearkened from upper floors that emitted an ambient light. She glanced upwards, up the stairwell and towards balustrades that skirted the platforms of upper floors.

Empty. Always empty.

"Hello?"

The emptiness ate her words. They didn't echo, smothered by the dust, and Lily bit back another cough. Only for a moment, however, before she gave into the urge and stuttered in splutters that sounded deafeningly loud to her ears. Then she tried again. "Hello? Is anyone here?"

No answer. Lily hadn't really been expecting any, even if the sudden appearance of Grimmauld Place was an invitation of sorts. Dropping a hand onto the balustrade, skin sliding slightly on the thin film of dust that darkened the polished wood, she turned to the stairs. And she climbed; in tiptoes, because regardless of what sense told her, she couldn't quite help herself. The house just seemed… old. Ancient, and empty, and stubbornly clinging to that emptiness.

Three stories she climbed. Three stories and past multiple floors and hallways and rooms. All empty, all laden in dust and all swallowing her words as she called into the persisting emptiness. Lily pressed her lips together. She wouldn't think her entrance had been in vain. She wouldn't think that Grimmauld Place presenting itself to her after years of absence was for no reason. And so she climbed.

"Hello?" she called, pausing on the third-floor landing to the barest of creaks on thin floorboard covering. There was no reply, still no reply, and Lily thinned her lips further. "You're here, aren't you? I know you are."

No reply, but the house sighed as though in resignation. Lily stepped down the hallway. Her feet scuffed on the runner of carpet, just as it had on the floors below. She blinked into the gloom of the empty rooms in just the same way as she had. Eyes grazed over empty walls, across empty floors, towards closed windows and loneliness. Until…

There was one door. One single door, and the furthest from the entrance to the lonely house. When Lily considered, she thought she might have suspected it to be The Room. The one room, where she would find him. Where she expected to find him. Where few enough people in the world expected to find him, as nobody even believed he existed after his disappearance, but for her family.

She didn't knock. She didn't raise her voice to announce herself. Lily pushed the door open with fingers that were only a little tentative but not hesitant in the slightest.

And there he was.

The room wasn't quite empty, but it was nearly so. There was a chair, which he was sat in. There was a desk, and he sat behind it, elbow propped atop. The window right by his side wasn't wholly covered by curtains, and his gaze was turned through the fogged glass, peering at nothing and everything. At the world that didn't know he existed. Not anymore.

Were Lily to have seen him for the first time, she would think the young man barely twenty, and perhaps not even that. Short, thin, with a mop of tousled hair just a little overlong and round, outdated spectacles upon his nose. A wizard in modern society wouldn't be wearing those; Optico-Medimancy had improved in leaps and bounds in the past decades. They as much as the worn jeans just visible beneath the desk, the lumpy sweater faded from its vivid green colour – all of it spoke of times gone by. Of a time that only he still existed in.

Time had been kind to Harry Potter. Too kind, even. So kind it was almost cruel.

Lily couldn't quite step into the room. Her hand squeezed the doorknob and she swallowed thickly. Years, it had been. Too many years since she'd seen him, and he hadn't aged a day. He never would, either, or so she suspected. She and her brothers and her mother, her entire family. They and they alone, because for all intents and purposes, Harry Potter, the once Saviour of the Wizarding World, had vanished.

The truth was far harsher. A cruel twist of fate, even, that he should be so afflicted with the curse that his nemesis Voldemort had sought to obtain at all costs.

The doorknob bit into Lily's palm, but she hardly felt it. It was suddenly a struggle to speak. A struggle to breathe, even; perhaps all that dust had clogged in her throat? But she swallowed again, and eventually, she spoke.

"Hi, Dad."

Harry Potter could have been a statue. Until that moment, at least, he could have been carved from stone. When Lily spoke, however, he blinked as he seemed to have refrained from doing and twitched. He drew a breath that shifted his shoulders and slowly, so slowly, as slowly as the lonely house was old and dusty, he turned towards her. Even across the distance between them, Lily could see his eyes. They were the same as her brother's, though Albus had never looked so world-weary. Never so… exhausted.

"I need you to come with me."

Harry blinked again. He stared, and the impression was eerie. For more than that he was her father who looked young enough to be her son, Lily felt uneasy. It had just been so long.

"Mum needs you. It's… it's getting close, Dad. I don't think she'll last much longer and she said… she asked for…"

Lily trailed off. She couldn't quite finish her words, couldn't utter the reality of the situation that was the gradual decline of Ginny Weasley. But for all of his silence and slowness, all of his detachedness, Harry appeared to have heard her.

He straightened slightly. Slowly, almost like the old man that he was yet didn't appear, he straightened. He still met Lily's eyes, and within them a haunted light grew. "Is the world ready for that?"

Lily's grasp on the doorknob was painful, but she didn't care. If anything, she appreciated it. It was grounding. "I don't really care. Not anymore. Mum needs you, Dad."

Harry stared for a long moment. Everything seemed to be long, to take a long time. It was almost aggravating - or would have been, if Lily didn't feel it entirely in-keeping with the house itself. Then Harry nodded sagely. "Then so be it. And the world will know."

Then Harry Potter, the Boy Who Had Lived Twice and continued to live unerringly, rose to his feet to reveal the truth to the world.


	6. A Bird in the Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Works of magic began at a young age. In most children, it was accidental, but in others... not so much.  
> Bethany Honey may be a simple Muggle teacher, but she knew from idle observation that Harry was far from 'normal'.  
> ~Inspired by the movie Matilda~

Bethany Honey had seen a wide range of children in her time. She would admit some stuck with her more than others.

There was Freya Holloway: a strikingly small girl who came to class every morning with her hair in bright blonde pigtails, bouncing as though she had springs in her feet. She was a torrent of laughter in the classroom, disruptive in the best possible way because it made the children _excited_. It gave them _inspiration_ and made it _fun._ Freya had not been the smartest girl, but Miss Bethany Honey remembered her nonetheless.

She remembered Yvonne Stanton, too. A quiet girl, dark-eyed and glaring more than she smiled. Or at least she was quiet when she didn't snap, lashing out at her fellow classmates. Bethany would always remember her for the moment she boldly picked up her chair and threw it at a fellow child who had called her 'Evie'. As though it had been a personal insult.

Tyson Cheong had a knack for maths that was all but genius.

Billy Butterson had clung to Bethany's legs for a full two weeks from the moment he'd started in his first year.

Ursula Gray, Darren Hodgers, Peter McGrath – all of them Bethany Honey remembered for their brightness, their happiness, their intelligence, as much as she recalled those who left a dark shadow upon the classroom and slunk through the doorway like beaten dogs. There were _special_ children that she'd seen in the ten years she'd been teaching.

None, however, quite so special as Harry Potter.

Harry was… a quiet boy, just like Yvonne. Except that Harry didn't 'snap'. He was bright, like Tyson, but not a genius at maths, and always seemed to be holding himself back. He was short and skinny, just like Billy had been, but he never clung to her legs or cowered behind teachers like their second shadow.

Harry was special for an entirely different reason, and Bethany Honey realised it only on her final day of teaching him.

It was in the playground. Duty called, attendance demanded, and in the spread of concrete grounds and simple play equipment, leaning basketball hoops and squares of hopscotch, Bethany drew her gaze around herself with practiced efficiency. She had a whistle that could be used to call the attention of a particularly wayward student, but how much trouble could primary schoolers truly make? None that couldn't be quelled by a sharp, "Geoffrey, put that stick down!" or "Annabel, please leave your shoes on."

As was customary – almost expected, because Annabel wasn't a memorable child by any means but she was noteworthy for her propensity for disrobing of footwear – Bethany was crouched on the unforgiving basketball courts barely ten minutes into lunch and shucking the girl's shoes on. "Annabel, you know we have to keep our shoes on at school."

Annabel frowned, glaring at her toes, but that glare faded when she glanced up at Bethany with wide blue eyes. "Sorry, Miss."

"That's alright," Bethany said, looping the laces into bunny ears. "Just try to remember for tomorrow."

"Yes, Miss," Annabel said with a dutiful nod, and she hopped to her feet to scamper after her coterie of friends moments later. Bethany watched her leave, hand shading her eyes from the glaring sun, and shook her head. Annabel wouldn't remember, and if not Bethany then some other teacher would be on their knees and tying laces the next day. Bethany knew she was well liked by the students – "My best, favourite, most wonderful teacher I've ever had!" Norbert Whittaker had exclaimed on frequent occasion – but sometimes there was no getting through to children.

It was as Bethany watched Annabel retreat that she saw Harry trotting around the edge of the basketball courts. He crept with the kind of practiced step that suggested he barely even realised he crept at all, and Bethany couldn't help but sigh in momentary sadness. Harry was… not a problem child, but he clearly had problems. With his family, for one, and with friends. He didn't _have_ friends, was more the issue, and his family seemed to despair of him.

"He just has… issues," Bethany had overheard his horse-faced aunt saying. "We've tried fixing him, but he just doesn't respond."

"There's no overcoming the boy's quirks," his uncle had claimed, blustering through his blond moustache with pomp that Bethany could only frown at. "We've tried to get him to be more like our own son, Dudley, but there's no fixing what's already broken."

Bethany couldn't help but flinch whenever she recalled the overheard conversation. Personally, she believed it to be something of a problem with the _Dursleys_ more than Harry himself. The poor boy; he looked like a flighty bird most of the time. What kind of seven year old started whenever a door opened too loudly?

"Harry," Bethany found herself calling before she quite knew what she was doing. "Are you alright?"

Harry started, and Bethany immediately regretted her words. There was little he didn't seem to find startling, in fact, and she kicked herself for not recalling that as well. Maybe it was his age. Maybe he'd grow out of it. But for now…

Harry stared at her with his wide eyes, round glasses nearly lost beneath the mess of his fringe. His shoulders seemed to hunch slightly into the oversized – always oversized – jumper he wore. Then he tucked his chin briefly and nodded before turning on his heel and continuing to trot in a circuitous route around the basketball court.

Bethany bit her lip as she watched him, hand still raised to shade her eyes. He looked concerned, if a boy with a largely blank expression but for his constant attentiveness could appear concerned. In the midst of shouting and laughing and playing children, Harry Potter was the anomaly of the playground.

Bethany found herself following after him without intention.

Around the court, following in the invisible footsteps of her wayward pupil, Bethany spared a word of acknowledgement and a nod of her head to each child she passed. There were many, and Norbert, ever vocal in his appreciation, bellowed an ecstatic, "Hi, Miss Honey!" across the grounds as though he hadn't just seen her in class barely half an hour before.

Bethany spared him a smile, a nod, and another smile and nod to each of the other students that scampered up to her. She would always have time for the students she loved, even when on a mission of pursuit as she was. Eventually, however, Bethany detached herself enough from her rag-tag team of attendants to hasten after Harry once more.

She found him at the edge of one of the school rooms. A boring building, bricks so brown they were almost grey, it was just short of out of bounds. Bethany almost raised her voice to call him back – almost, but not quite, because the sound of cackles of laughter, snickers of amusement and something that sounded definitively like taunts, curved around the building towards them.

"Stomp on it, stomp on it!"

"If you break it, do you think it'll have a baby in it?"

"Ew, that'd be gross!"

"You should try -"

"Get a stick -"

"- could maybe -"

"No, don't, it's really gross!"

Bethany closed her eyes. She didn't need to peer around the building to behold what was occurred out of sight, to see what Harry was clearly watching with his silent attentiveness. Spring found robins nesting in the sparse trees of the playground, and those nests… those eggs…

"Just crack it already, I want to see what's inside."

Bethany didn't stand too close to Harry, not close enough that he would feel her presence behind him, but she heard his muted dispute nonetheless. A whimper, maybe, and yet somehow angrier. It muffled an instant later, however, when, with an abruptness that caused Bethany herself to start, the wailing discordance of the school bell sounded.

Yelps replaced the children's words, and only a hastily thrown, "Dammit, you were too slow! Just leave it," served as a close to their taunting. Then the slap of footsteps on ground – not towards Bethany and Harry, as she might have anticipated, but away. Around the building. _Out of bounds_ , Bethany registered detachedly, only to shrug it aside. 'Bounds' had always been something of an unnecessary regulation to her.

Any attention she'd spared to the retreating students, however, disappeared as Harry scampered into motion. Not to class, as Bethany might have anticipated, but around the building into disappearance. Bethany started forwards a step, paused, and glanced over her shoulder. She _should_ return to her classroom. She _should_ call to Harry, remind him that the bell had rung, that he should be as responsible with his attendance as Bethany was herself.

But she didn't. Bethany didn't know why she didn't; some of the other staff called her 'weak-willed to student whims', but Bethany wasn't so sure about that. She stepped forwards with intention that somehow seemed… instinctive. Compulsive, even.

And that was when she saw.

Harry had a nest in his hands. A small nest, though it seemed not quite as small as it perhaps should have been for the similar smallness of Harry's hands. He cradled the mess of twigs and – perhaps, maybe – unbroken eggs in his sweater-draped hands and, peering at the cluster with a tip of his head, turned towards the nearest tree. He paused. Juggled the nest for a second. Climbed, as though he'd done it a thousand times before. It wasn't a forgiving tree, and Bethany was surprised he managed as well as he did.

Not far enough, though. Not far enough to reach the branches, to replace the nest, to -

Bethany blinked. Harry didn't throw the nest. There was no throwing involved and yet somehow… somehow it had just…

There were some children that Bethany Honey remembered. Freya with her pigtails, Yvonne and the throwing chair, Tyson, and Billy, and Ursula, and Peter. They were all special, all unique. None, Bethany discovered that day as she saw a nest levitate itself into the upper reaches of the school ground tree, quite so memorable as Harry Potter.


	7. Scrambled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco was a wizard, through and through. But after the war, the world that extended beyond wizardry seemed somehow less distant. A certain happenstance found the Muggle world far closer than he'd previously imagined possible.  
> And the Muggle world - it wasn't all he'd cracked it up to be.

There were many things he'd discovered in the past months.

That he liked the colour green more than any other imaginable. Not any kind of green either, but a bright, amused, slightly sparkling green that darkened just a little with accompanying laughter.

He'd discovered that he liked cookie dough ice-cream far more than the more classical flavours, and that Fortescue's certainly trumped all other parlours in the entirety of Britain, if not the whole world.

He'd learnt how to drive, which was a significant and not unappealing merit to his name, and that reverse parallel parking was surely one of the most difficult skills possible to acquire. Truly dextrous drivers were something akin to possessing of their own particular brand of magic.

And he'd learnt that Muggles were bloody terrifying.

For the entirety of his childhood, Draco Malfoy had been raised to believe Muggles were beneath him.

They were, really, of course they were.

They didn't possess magic, which was akin to lacking common sense, and they were so populace as to more closely resemble scurrying ants upon a Quidditch pitch than people. Truly, they must breed like rabbits; Draco was sure that witches and wizards weren't capable of producing quite so many offspring. Unless they were a Weasley, perhaps.

Weasleys were definitely the exception.

But despite all of that, and an upbringing that tagged Muggles as little more than unexpectedly cluey apes, Draco was rapidly coming to the realisation that they were… maybe just a little bit incredible. Three months it had taken him. Three months to decide that, when it came to technology, Draco was so far out of his depth as to be upon a different plane of existence entirely.

The kitchen. That was the main challenge. Not the television, for that required only simply understanding of signs and symbols that Draco had long ago committed to memory after first scratching them into his ever-present notebook. Light switches weren't exactly a challenge either; anyone with simple knowledge of a _Lumos_ charm could figure that out. Even the alarm clock his stubborn excuse for a lover had insisted upon retaining responded well enough to a few solid strikes with a sleep-heavy fist.

But the kitchen — that was where the mania truly began.

There was always humming. There was always something whirring, or clicking, or purring like an ominously complacent cat. It didn't matter that the kitchen itself was one of the largest rooms in the house; Draco didn't think it was large enough when he couldn't stand in a single spot without the refrigerator maintaining the capacity to fall upon him.

Three months of marriage hadn't changed that stark terror. Draco doubted it ever would.

"Just turn it down a little bit," a voice murmured from behind him.

Draco twitched. "I can't."

"Yes, you can. It's not that hard, just —"

'I _can't_."

"Just turn the dial until the hotplate dies down a little."

"I can't just take my hand off —"

"Draco. If you let go of the handle for a second, it's not going to explode."

Draco swallowed. He wasn't scared — or at least not aloud. It was just disconcerting. Fire shouldn't just crackle into existence like that without a wand and enchantment. Not even wandless, wordless magic sparked so easily and with as little explanation. He glared down at the frying pan before him, the mush of eggs rapidly scrambling without his control began to smoke. "If I die, I'm blaming you."

"Of course you will."

"If the house burns down —"

"You can blame that on me, too."

Draco swallowed again. The eggs were really smoking, and that was… definitely bad. Not a week prior, upon his last attempt to cook in their disastrous excuse for a kitchen, the fire alarm had sparked to attention and nearly wailed the flat down. Draco had heard ringing in his ears for a whole three days afterwards, he would swear.

Slowly, so slowly that his hand felt like it almost creaked on the frying pan's handle, he loosened his grip. Just one hand. Only one, and then he was snatching at the dial for the stovetop with the speed only a Seeker in the throes of desperation could manage.

The hotplate dimmed. The smoking dissipated. Could Draco breathe again? It was debateable.

A bubble of laughter sounded behind him, moments before the feeling of arms wrapping around his waist almost bereft him of his breath entirely. "I'm very proud of you," she said.

"Don't belittle me?" Draco said, pursing his lips as he jiggled the gelatinous mass of eggs around their pan.

"I'm not belittling. I'm praising."

"It sounds an awful lot like belittling."

"You've come a long way, Draco. I never thought you capable of it."

Draco didn't quite glance over his shoulder, but it was a near thing. When she spoke like that… the warmth, the affection, even laced with teasing, made it nearly impossible _not_ to look. "Well, the threat of never eating a home-cooked meal again is something of a catalyst."

She laughed, breathing warmly into his shoulder. "We agreed that when I married you, I wasn't going to be your slave."

"Or house elf."

"Slave," she repeated for emphasis. "Though I might not have let you starve, precisely."

"That's comforting to hear."

The scent of butter and salt, a hint of the chilli she'd thrown into the pan at the beginning 'to taste', she'd said, wafted thickly into the air. Draco almost thought that it might be worth it to brave the stovetop to be the sole person responsible for that smell. It made him oddly proud of himself.

"I think that's just about done," she murmured into his shoulder.

"You can tell."

"Draco, you're talking to a trained chef."

Draco grunted, levering the frying pan off the hotplate. "A chef who'd let her husband starve to death."

"I thought we'd established I wouldn't let that happen," she laughed.

It was such a warm sound. Loving. As rich as the butter and salt, and as blessedly welcome as music to his ears. For a moment, just a moment, Draco forgot about the terrors of the kitchen. He forgot that the refrigerator would likely explode, or that the very wiring in the walls could spark alight at any second. Briefly, for a heartbeat, he leant back into her embrace.

Who'd have thought? Who'd have even contemplated that a chance meeting, a comment that was more of a critique, and an accidental display of magic in a favoured restaurant, could lead to this? Certainly not Draco. Certainly not —

The toaster popped, and Draco nearly leapt out of his skin. His eyes snapped open, he bodily flinched, and it was certainly a good thing the frying pan rested firmly upon the bench, for it would surely have smeared scrambled eggs on the floor otherwise.

"Bloody hell."

She laughed. "It's just the —"

"We're getting rid of that thing."

"Draco, it's just —"

"Do you want to give me a heart attack?"

"Toasters are just —"

"Because I swear to Merlin, my nerves can't take any more of this kind of harassment…"

She only laughed. She always laughed. And no matter how sorely Draco was tempted to walk out of the Muggle world and back into the comforting embrace of magic, it was she who always brought him back.


	8. Fluffy Clouds and Silver Linings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Would that Harry became a Defence teacher as seemed to so perfectly suit him, the inevitable blurring of the line between father and professor would arrive in due course. Harry didn't have a problem with that at all. If anything, it was kind of... fun.

The bell sounded, resounding through the yawning corridors of Hogwarts and trembling through stone floors. To the ears of so many, those bells bespoke commitment. They spoke a cessation of liberation, a beginning of routine, and weight placed upon the shoulders of the hard-worn teen.

Harry remembered when those bells had been less than a welcoming sound. Now, they bespoke something entirely different.

He didn't rise from his chair. He didn't straighten from his desk, dropping his quill and flicking his wand to open the doors and allow entry of the new students. Hogwarts was a large castle; the trip from the Great Hall to Harry's rooms took nearly a whole five minutes for those who didn't dawdle. And the newly returned students – they would dawdle. Harry knew that much, at least.

 _They always do,_ he thought, smiling slightly as he added a period at the end of his sentence before beginning the next. _If there's one thing I've learned about teenagers…_

That knowledge, at least, was one acquired from a number of sources. He didn't need a trio of his own to teach him that, just as he didn't need nearly ten years of history as a professor at Hogwarts to know, either.

Eventually, the sounds did come. Echoing on the tail end of the bell that still resounded like a ghostly wail, the bubble of student voices rippled through Harry's door. He glanced up briefly, across the spread of the empty desks waiting expectantly to be filled, the cluster of chairs that had sat untouched for months, and the door that stood with weary resignation of the stream about to flood through its frame. Harry felt his smile widen. He loved teaching, and had grown to love it even more over the years, but this year…

 _James took it in his stride_ , Harry thought, finally resting his quill down upon his desk. _Probably because he had the Marauders Map on him, but he's always been the more confident of the two. Al, though…_

The murmur of voices approaching Harry's door morphed into actual words, and he finally rose from his seat. With a shrug of his cardigan – for regardless of what Professor Malfoy said in all of his pride and pomp, he'd never been partial to wearing them – he skirted his desk until he stood at the corner. A swish of his wand, a swing of the door, and Harry was settling himself back upon the edge of his desk with the ease of years beneath his belt.

They were there. Of course they were there, waiting with the attentiveness and nervous energy that only first years possessed. In Harry's experience, the majority of first years tended to hasten to their classes early on the first day; history suggested that excessive punctuality was the most likely expression of their nervousness, when tardiness in the face of getting lost was avoided.

The first year waiting just at the door – a Gryffindor, hid tie a little crooked and robes a little rumpled – started as the room abruptly spread before him. The voices died down. Heads turned, eyes widened, and eyebrows rose as faces peered over shoulders to catch a glimpse inside of the room. Not a one of them moved, clustering like a horde of penguins on the edge of a glacier fearing the first dive.

Harry's smile widened. With a raised hand, he gestured to the room before him. "Come on, then. The desks won't bite you; they prefer the meatier fourth years and above for breakfast."

The Gryffindor boy started, and several others shifted slightly with a different kind of nervousness. But as Harry only smiled, shoulders eased and wide eyes became less fearful and more curious. It took another beckon to coax the first of them into the room, but Harry didn't mind.

 _I was never like that, was I?_ He pondered. He certainly hadn't felt like it.

Whispers kickstarted as the children scuttled into the room. A scraping of chairs and the thud of bags dropped beneath desks was the only accompaniment, and throughout it all, the children stared. They stared, and stared, eyes wide and still nervous, but definitely curious, too. Harry was used to that. He'd grown accustomed to those kind of stares over the years, from children who'd heard tales of the Boy Who Lived and the supposed Saviour of the Wizarding World. It was all frightfully exaggerated, blown far out of proportion over the years until Harry half forgot how completely lucky he'd been in the fight against Voldemort. He almost, almost believed the _Prophet_ in their annual spiel about how he'd orchestrated the entire conclusive fight.

Almost, but not quite.

Hogwarts was an escape from that. To retreat to his first and only real home, to call upon skills he'd never even suspected he'd possessed but Hermione claimed, "Was actually rather obvious, when you think about it, Harry, especially given the DA in fifth year," was what felt _good_ , and _right_. And yet Harry would be lying if he claimed it wasn't at least a little bit of a means to an end; there were, after all, certain wards around Hogwarts that forbade the access of reporters that _really_ should be seeking fresher stories after nineteen-bloody-years.

But the children… His appreciation for their brightness, a mimic of his own children's, was a bonus he'd never even considered when he'd taken the job McGonagall offered him. That brightness beamed from the first years before him like a tangible glow.

When the bell sounded again, Harry rose from his perch on the edge of his desk. Fiddling idly with his wand, he strolled towards the front row of desks, smiling at a Gryffindor girl, a little Slytherin boy, a kid whose hair was such a mess he mustn't have run a comb through it since he'd left home. Harry couldn't help but smile at that; it reminded him so much of his own circumstances. Malfoy still complained in the staff room about his 'abominable hair'.

The students silenced. That was a first year thing, too. Come second year – or even a few weeks down the track – and they wouldn't be half as attentive. But at that moment, Harry held them in a rapture, and he couldn't help but warm for it. He opened his mouth to speak -

And stopped. Frowned. Blinked.

_Where's Al?_

The thought arose without his conscious effort, and Harry swiftly swept his gaze across the spread of students. A quick head count, a darting glance towards every green-tied neck in the room, and his frown deepened.

Al wasn't there. He definitely wasn't there.

Harry's fingers tightened around his wand. Of course he was worried about Al. What parent wouldn't be on their child's first day? Even more than that, however, Harry was even _more_ worried for the fact that Al had been a blubbering mess the previous night. A sniffling, sobbing mess of, "I'm sorry, Dad," and "I didn't realise when the hat _asked_ me that I should've said not Slytherin!" so _of course_ Harry was worried. And now…

Harry swallowed. This wasn't good. He had a responsibility to his class, a whole twenty students he was supposed to be teaching. He couldn't very well walk out the door in search of his son, even if he _was_ worried. A thickness settled in Harry's throat, but a second swallow did little to alleviate it.

 _Maybe I could just…_ "Mr Grayson," Harry asked, turning his gaze towards a twig of a Slytherin boy in the front row. The boy started slightly, flushed as all eyes swung towards him, but Harry hardly noticed. "Are you aware of where any of your missing housemates might be?"

Grayson blinked. The poor kid looked to be nearly choking on his tongue. Whether it was because Harry was his new teacher, the Head of Gryffindor House, or famous for a history nearly twenty years behind him, he looked to be somewhat starstruck. His mouth opened to reply, but little more than a cheep stuttered out.

Luckily for the boy, it wasn't needed.

The sound of slapping footsteps rebounded through the corridor just outside Harry's door, and he turned instinctively to the entrance. As one, the entire class turned their attention with him, and it was likely that as much as anything that had Al staggering to a stop on the threshold.

He was breathing heavily. Panting, even, and his eyes were wide, hair a frazzled mess as good as Harry's own could manage. But he was there, and Harry instantly felt his sudden influx of fear ease. Even more so when a second figure nearly crashed into Al in a yelp and stutter of apologies.

Harry smiled. Again. Good humour welled within him, though this time from an unexpected source. How could it not when Al turned to the boy at his side, leaned into him with the comfort of easy friendship, and whispered fiercely in his ear. Closing his eyes briefly, Harry shook his head before speaking. "Mr Potter. Mr Malfoy. If you would be so kind as to join us?"

Al started. At his side, little Scorpius Malfoy – of a height with Al but otherwise as opposite as could be – seemed to nearly leap out of his skin. Then Al flushed, and Scorpius' cheeks flamed even more brightly for his paleness, and the pair were stumbling into the room in a mess of tripping robes and ducking heads.

Harry bit back a chuckle and, even if it would cause just a hint of embarrassment, he couldn't help but say, "Tardiness isn't going to be accepted even if you are the son of a teacher, Mr Potter."

A ripple trembled through the classroom. Eyes switched between Harry and Al, and more eyes than Harry would have thought possible widened once more in sudden understanding. Hadn't they known? Had they not realised that Al was his son?

Al paused for a moment, glancing towards Harry. His cheeks still flamed but, like the quietly obliging boy he so often was, he ducked his head in a nod. "Yes, Da - I mean, Professor. Sorry, we just got lost."

"Then perhaps a map?" Harry said. "I know of a rather good one you can get your hands on."

Likely no one else in the class would understand Harry's words for what they were, but it hardly mattered. Harry spoke in reprimand for the benefit of the class, but he also spoke for Al's sake. The silent suggestion that he seek his older brother was clearly received, too; Al's lips quivered slightly in a small smile, then he dipped his head again in a nod. "Yes, s-sir." He followed Scorpius to the two remaining seats alongside the wall.

Harry had to hide a smile as he turned back to the class at large. He had to concentrate upon his prepared speech, the same speech he gave to every first year class, because it was that or glance once more towards Al, and that wouldn't be a good idea. Not when the warmth that welled within him at the sight of two heads, dark and so pale as to be nearly white, bowed together in a whispered exchange. Al was a nervous child, had his fears and anxieties that even Harry couldn't alleviate, and that anxiety had likely contributed to him becoming lost in the first place. And yet…

 _Maybe Slytherin's not such a bad choice for him after all_ , Harry thought. He wondered, idly, what Malfoy would say when he saw his son seated with such surprising familiarity beside Al come their first Potions class.

Not that it really mattered. Not that Harry really cared. At that moment, as he launched into his introductory spiel, Harry revelled in his usual satisfaction for the beginning class of the year. He'd grown to love his teaching, and that love expanded every year. Only this time, at least, there was just a little extra silver lining to the surprisingly bright cloud.


	9. Muggle Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The friendship between the boys was undeniable. Draco wasn't so petty as to stand in its way - not anymore. He just hadn't wagered upon 'enabling it' to involve so many unexpected turns.

Malfoy Manor was a regal abode. Should one happen upon it, to stare up at the towering, dark walls of its stoic frame, the tiled roof sloping down like a tipped hat, and the wide, darkened windows peering like unblinking eyes, they would have been intimidated. Of course they would be, if only because the grounds were sprawling and expansive. That the entire estate was ringed by a wall and iron-wrought gates to deter trespassers was probably a contributing factor, too.

It was, as acknowledged by the Wizarding world, one of the Old Houses. A pureblood house, untouched by time and as persistently unshakeable as a manor stepped right out a history book. Even Muggles, in all of their ignorance, perceived as much as they passed along the footpath winding in the shadow of that wall, their heads bowed over cell phones or ducking into cars idling in the gutter. Muggles in their Muggle world, and yet oblivious as they were to the magical nature of the manor they hastened past with an unwittingly wary sidelong glance, they knew it was old. Different. Other.

Malfoy Manor was removed from the world around it, and nearly as much as the Wizarding as the Muggle. Or at least it was - until the summer its youngest resident returned home from his first year at school.

"Let me do it, Father."

"No. You'll cut yourself."

"Father, I can use a knife -"

"And I can use a wand. No, Scorpius. Step back. It's dangerous."

Between the old, old walls of the old, old house, untouched by change and sedately placid with the weight of years that rested upon its foundations, change arose. That change was nudged into fruition by the desperate longing of Scorpius Malfoy.

Draco stared at his son across the parlour, regarding him with unblinking flatness as Scorpius waved the knife he'd likely stolen from some house elf with far too much enthusiasm. He was different to how Draco had known him before he'd started school. Different, even, from how he'd been at Christmas, though the change had already begun by that point. Scorpius had always been a quiet boy, withdrawn and reluctant to partake in the games of children his age. It was a different kind of isolation to that Draco had comfortably worn in his own childhood, and primarily because Scorpius was entirely alone in that isolation. At least Draco had his Slytherin housemates. But Scorpius…

Well, he was mostly alone. That 'mostly' was the primary reason he'd changed, Draco suspected. That 'mostly' was the reason he'd spoken more in the week since he'd returned from school than he seemingly had the entire year before, why he smiled more, seemed to have more energy, seemed excited as a twelve year old boy should be, rather than the subdued and seemingly dignified scion of the Malfoy family. It was that 'mostly' that catalysed his enthusiasm with the knife.

Draco raised his eyebrows pointedly, eyeing that very knife. "Put it down."

Scorpius frowned, a touch of a pout that Draco had only seen him begin to adopt that summer holidays pursing his lips. It almost reminded Draco of himself; he'd perfected that expression in his childhood. Deliberately so. "I want to help," Scorpius said.

"Not with that knife, you're not."

"It's going to be mine, Father."

Possessive. Just like me, too. Draco almost smiled, because he'd never seen that much of himself in Scorpius before. He wasn't sure if such was a good thing or not. "Regardless of whether it will be yours or not, I am the one more learned in the arts of Muggle gadgetry. Which means that I will be the one to open the box, and I will direct you on how to use it." He pointed his wand at Scorpius like a stabbing finger. "All of which have little bearing upon your knife-wielding."

Scorpius' pout deepened. "But -"

"Scorpius, if you don't put it down now, you're not getting this at all."

It was a lie, of course. Draco was indulgent with his son; even more than his wife was. He'd never had reason to withhold the urge to shower Scorpius with gifts and trinkets, games and books and anything else he'd desired, because Scorpius wasn't a demanding child. He didn't disregard such gifts, either, unlike many pureblood children born into money. So when he had asked for something, almost desperately, how could Draco deny him?

"Father," he'd said, almost as soon as he'd climbed from the Hogwarts Express, "I need a phone."

Draco gave his son everything - and yet at that moment, he very nearly withheld from his ready provision.

Malfoy Manor was old. Ancient, even, and untouched by Muggle hands and Muggle science. It roiled with magic so thickly that most technology likely wouldn't function within its walls anyway, and Draco had never tested it. He had to work with gadgets for work, of course, despite the confusion it evoked; the Ministry's stumbling steps into progressiveness deemed it necessary to become familiar with telephones and televisions and tele-whatever-else, to say nothing of the newer items on the market. Draco had seen more evidence of Muggle science that bordered on magic in recent years than he had any inclination to understand. Evidence and an integration

Internets and 'routers' that enabled communication in a second, to say nothing of the archives of knowledge stored 'on the web'.

Digital watches that did more than simply tell the time, and little gadgets that hooked into ears and played music.

Exercise machines that made a runner sprint on the spot, or a bicycle that rode nowhere. Special panelling that made energy from the sun. Cooking utensils that could keep a dinner warm without a Warming Charm, and electric kettles, and special machines that functioned only to make donuts, or waffles, or press a square of sandwich into a square of grilled sandwich.

And that hardly even brushed the surface. Draco saw more Muggle magic every day, and much of it he didn't understand. Much not many wizards understood, for that matter, and in turn evolved questions like, "How does a Muggle make an aeroplane fly?" to "How many wizards does it take to make an aeroplane fly?" Because Draco didn't know how, and he was sure that few enough of his colleagues did.

For all his ignorance, however, Draco knew more of it than his wife did. Certainly more than Scorpius - or so he'd thought, until Scorpius had begun babbling like he'd never babbled before.

"I'll be able to call my friends whenever I like, and I won't even need a fireplace," or "When I'm hooked up to the 'Net, I can download books without having to go to Diagon Alley," or "If I get one with a camera, Father, then I could take pictures and post them on this place called Instagram, and then everyone could see -"

"And you know how to do this?" Draco had interrupted on that particular occasion. "You know how to make a call, and take a picture with the special phone camera, and do a… post?"

Scorpius had paused at that, yet though he'd fallen as silent as he usually was, the mute shyness didn't resurface. It was a considering silence that arose instead as he frowned, gaze dropping to his feet in thought. His brow furrowed increasingly deeply for a long moment until he abruptly brightened and raised his gaze to Draco. "But you know how to use a phone, don't you, Father? You could show me, couldn't you?"

How could Draco say no to that? Even though it would be a sorry mess to tweak the wards and smother the magic of the manor to enable Muggle technology to work, and even if that technology still sometimes caused him to twitch in discomfort, Draco was still a father. He still wanted to help his son. He still wanted to make him happy and proud.

So Draco bought Scorpius a phone. It had taken him a whole week of gnawing his lip and denying the notion, but he'd done it. That phone rested in his lap where he sat upon the parlour couch and stared down Scorpius' excited attempts at helping.

"Do I need to call the house elves to come and take the knife away from you?" Draco asked as a final warning. "Perhaps I should send you to your room? I'm sure I'll have a grand time fiddling with this device while you're sulking."

It was a lie, of course, but Scorpius didn't need to know that. His pout disappeared instantly, and Draco thought it only his fear of being dismissed from the grand opening of the phone that he didn't immediately drop the knife upon the floor. Instead, edging forwards with suddenly wide-eyed wariness, Scorpius placed the knife upon the table in the centre of the room. He slipped silently into the couch alongside Draco's a moment later, though for all his silence, his eager perch on the end of his seat bespoke nothing if not barely restrained excitement.

Draco stared at him for a moment longer before nodding approvingly. Then he stared a little longer still. Let Scorpius think it be in reprimand; he wouldn't possibly have guessed that Draco was nervous - no, apprehensive about opening the box. Not at all. He was his all-knowing father, after all.

With a breath that Draco managed to mask the depth of, he finally dropped his gaze to the box in his lap. With a flick of his wand, it unfolded itself of the strange folds of cardboard that his and Scorpius' confusion for unwrapping had led to the retrieval of the knife in the first place. The box peeled apart like an orange into a structure of misshapen plastic, paper booklets, and wires wrapped tightly upon themselves. A wide, flat, black contraption that Draco knew was the phone itself only from observation of the more tech-savvy ministry workers lay in the very centre.

"Is that it?" Scorpius whispered. The reverence in his tone suggested it was more of a sacred idol than a gadget that lived in the pocket of every Muggle on the street.

Draco swallowed. With casualness that belied the awkwardness of his fingers, he plucked the phone from its plastic cocoon. "This," he said,holding it out flat on his palm, "is your phone. Do not break it."

Scorpius' eyes were widened further as he glanced up at Draco. "Of course, Father."

"You will call only your schoolmates and no one else. Am I understood?"

Scorpius nodded solemnly. He and Draco had shared many a talk over the dangers Draco had only recently learned pertaining to Muggle telecommunication devices. Social media, he'd discovered almost at the same time as he'd learned that 'social media' was even a thing, could be terribly dangerous. "Yes, Father."

"You will return it to me every evening before bed. I'm the one with the batt-er-y, so if you wish to use it the next day, you'll need to, ah… 'plug it in', I believe it's called."

"Yes, Father."

"And should any difficulties arise, you will approach me about them. Understood?"

Scorpius stared at Draco for a moment longer. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face and he nodded with more excitement than solemnity this time. "Yes, Father," he repeated.

Draco nodded once more. He couldn't help but smile a little himself, because he liked that Scorpius was excited, if not quite the reason for that excitement. Scorpius had rarely been anything less than nervous or subdued his entire life - it was the cross every Malfoy bore after the war.

But now he was excited. He was happy. Draco would be foolish not to accept the source of that happiness. Pinching the phone, he gestured with it to Scorpius indicatively. "Alright, then. Let's get this set up. From what I understand, it takes quite some effort to initiate…"

Draco didn't know what he was doing. Of course he didn't, but he knew more than Scorpius, and that left him in charge. He'd made phone calls before, and even used a cell phone on occasion, if with almost embarrassing inefficiency. Draco knew he knew far more than his son, which wasn't particularly unexpected; purebloods weren't supposed to understand Muggle magic.

Besides, Draco had the instruction booklet. If nothing else, he would make it work out of sheer stubbornness. It was a father-son bonding moment of which Draco's wife had eagerly bowed out from, and Draco refused to let go without trying his utmost to make it work.

"It says to put the sim card in. Which one is the sim card?"

"I think it's the one that says 'SIM', Father."

"What? What one that -?"

"This one."

"Ah. Now, to put it in, there should be a little window that opens on the side…"

"Here?"

"Yes, yes, I think that's it. And we need a little pin to poke it open with -"

"This?"

"... Yes, that. Give it here, Scorpius, I'll put it together."

"Yes, Father."

It was a mess of pieces, delicate windows and flimsy metal protrusions that poked out before sliding back into place. The wiring of the 'charger' became a tangled snake as soon as Draco unravelled it to plug it into one of the chunky, external batteries he'd taken from work. He'd have to power the thing each day; the manor wasn't capable of evolving to accept a modern Muggle rewiring, and Draco was secretly relieved for that inability. He might accept the phone's presence for Scorpius, but more than that? It was nothing short of daunting.

"Where's the 'On' button?"

"I'll read the booklet, Scorpius, you -"

"Oh, I found it."

"Where?"

"Here. The one on the top, it's - oh, look! I turned it on! Father, look, it's working!"

"Yes, it appears to be. Now, this device is strange in that, instead of buttons, the screen projects the letters and numbers you'll use to select - what're you doing?"

"It told me to put my name in it."

"Did you press the screen?"

"I pressed the letters on the screen. Wasn't I supposed to?"

"...yes."

It was a trial. It was more confusion, and there were buttons that weren't buttons, and a glaringly bright screen, and words like Wi-Fi and iCloud that Draco didn't understand. He knew what an email was but not how to use it. He knew what a passcode was - of course he did - but not how to ensure it had 'letters and numbers and symbols' in it.

Scorpius figured that out. Somehow, as though he just had an innate knack for it, he worked it out himself. Draco was as baffled as he was secretly proud.

In short, Draco taught Scorpius to use his new phone. Or he attempted. Or, perhaps more correctly, they learned together, and Scorpius taught Draco as much as Draco informed him of from what his limited knowledge could provide. Scorpius was... surprisingly adept given that he'd had no experience with phones or electronics or - or Muggle gadgets before.

"I learned a little bit at school," Scorpius said when Draco asked. His eyes were locked unblinkingly on the screen that was bigger than his hands and sat cradled in his palms. His attention was rapt. "And I played Candy Crush on the train home."

Draco blinked. He didn't know what a 'candy crush' was. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. He'd bought the phone, made the allowance, committed himself to teaching Scorpius how to use it - and surprisingly seemed to be of little help at all. "Well, I trust you won't abuse the knowledge you have?"

Scorpius shook his head immediately. Then he glanced up at Draco and beamed. It was a wide smile the likes that Draco wasn't sure he'd ever seen from his son, and he felt both warmed and saddened for that fact. And incessantly bemused, too. What was so good about a phone?

"Thanks, Father," Scorpius said. "This is the best thing ever."

Draco blinked again, and he was too stunned to smile, even if the urge rose within him. Well. That made the effort wholly worthwhile.

* * *

**my father got me a phone . i'm just starting to use it now .**

_Wait, what? Seriously? You actually convinced him to get it for you?_

**yes ! isn't it so good ?**

_Scorpius, that's awesome! I didn't think you'd pull it off!_

_Also, you totally text like a newb._

**hey ! I will get better with practice . you are the first person I am texting**

_Really? Well, then, I'm honoured. Seriously, though, Scor, this is awesome. I was definitely going to miss chatting with you this holidays otherwise. Even Floo-chats aren't quite the same, and you've got to sit at the fireplace the whole time._

**yes ! we can now talk all the time ! i am so happy !**

In his room, sprawled on his bed and staring at the screen of his phone, Albus Potter smiled. He hadn't been sure that Scorpius would be able to pull it off, what with being a Malfoy and all, but he had. And it would be totally worth it.


	10. Only Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily Evans was the kind of person that everyone adored. Or almost everyone. For Roberta Davies, she couldn't stand the beloved Muggleborn girl. Some days she could even convince herself of that fact.

"Bloody weirdo."

"Merlin, why do you do that?"

"What's your problem? Why do you have to read it upside down like a bloody _loser_?"

She ignored them. She would always ignore them. Such was what Luna had learned in her years of schooling; it did no one any good to relate, to bite back, to squirm and squeal and protest because they were _wrong_ and she wasn't _weird_. That just because she wasn't everyone else's version of normal she was 'a problem'.

Besides, they were probably misguided souls. That was what her father always told her. "Bullies," he'd once said, "target those they perceive as weaker than themselves to feel better about their own circumstances. They are trying to… compensate, as it were." He'd shaken his head, smiling gently, and there had been nostalgia in that smile. He knew, Luna suspected. He knew what it was like to be called weird, and wrong, and problematic. "Do not hate them, my Luna. Feel sorry for them. The people who matter will see the light in you, after all."

Luna believed that. She truly did. So she didn't hate the bullies. When her shoes disappeared, she blamed it on the nargles – which, if she was being honest with herself, she blamed at least half the incidents on anyway. When she somehow collected a sea of spitballs in her hair by the end of the day, she didn't glare and complain. The classmates around her were likely just bored.

When she tripped over a leg it was an accident. When her homework went missing, it was most likely misplaced. And when the common room door refused to open that one time… well, Luna didn't much mind sleeping in the corridor. Hogwarts was warm enough, heated by the magic that thrummed through its walls, that she didn't need a blanket.

She never blamed, not once, because Luna thought she understood the bullies. She thought they had their reasons, were hiding something, and lashed out at her because the perceived her as weaker. They simply didn't know; Luna wasn't _weaker_. She was just different. Her father always told her that such difference made her strong.

There was one, though, that she suspected of cruelty. How could she not when her friends – her actual friends, her _real_ friends – believed it of him? When Harry glared across the Great Hall at them, and Ron muttered imprecations under his breath that he didn't even seem to realise he spoke? Even Hermione's lips thinned when she spared that particular bully a glance, and Neville shrunk from his sight.

"He's a right foul git," Ginny had told Luna on more than one occasion. "He is. He's absolutely horrible. He calls Hermione a Mudblood, and he always picks fights with Harry and Ron. He picks on the little kids, and not just Gryffindors, too; I've heard he even scares the hell out of the Slytherins!"

Scaring someone was a horrible thing. Luna didn't like to be scared, and she didn't like it when others were scared, either. Teasing was one thing. Joking and not realising that such jokes hurt the target of amusement was another. But scaring?

Despite what her father had told her, Luna had to consider that Draco Malfoy was a right nasty piece of work. She didn't like to think as much, but all evidence pointed in that direction. He was cruel, mean, picked fights, hurt her friends – he must be a 'bad egg', as Luna's mother had once termed the less favourable members of society.

That was what Luna had truly grown to believe – until she stumbled into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

The ghost was miserable. She cried all the time, and moaned as though to live up to her namesake. She drifted around with heavy eyes and pouting lips, glaring as much as she wailed. She was a wholly sad person – so Luna kept her company. Sometimes. When she had the time, and wasn't racing about the school in search of her lost shoes filched by nargles and pranksters.

A particularly loud splatter and crash resounded from Myrtle's bathroom as Luna skipped her way down the corridor one afternoon. She had both shoes that day, which was a good thing. Her father had just owled her the latest copy of the Quibbler, too, which was also good. Luna was _happy_ , and though Myrtle always grumbled and complained, blaming her for her brightness because, "What is there to be happy about?" Luna suspected she enjoyed her merry company. Most people did and didn't even realise it. Like bullies. Luna suspected such was another reason they teased her so.

She paused outside the doorway, however. Another clatter, the slam of a door, and a pronounced sob echoed from the tiles within. Luna blinked. She felt her eyebrows rise. That didn't sound like Myrtle. Over the years – for they'd shared a longstanding friendship, Luna and Myrtle – she'd grown to know the tone of her voice. She knew the pitch of Myrtle's sobs, those feigned and real, and just how loudly she could wail.

The sob from within wasn't Myrtle-loud. It wasn't high-pitched and demanding of attention, nor whimpering and blubbering in self-pity. It was that more than anything, that it sounded real, pained, that it _hurt_ , that Luna crept tentatively forward to peer within.

The bathroom was bare. It was boringly white, the stalls untouched by modernity as even the castle's renovators seemed to have forsaken updating its furnishings. The grime of years of flooding painted blackness between the floor tiles that even the house elves couldn't seem to wipe clean, and the sinks were a permanent shade of off-white just a little concerning for the school's hygiene standards.

Luna liked it. It felt homey, in a strange kind of way. Lived in.

But she barely saw it as she peered inside. The bathroom was usually empty, but not today. Myrtle hung above the faucets, her transparent hands waving and fluttering in concern, and though she moaned it was of a different kind.

"Tell me where it hurts," she said, all but sobbing her sympathy. "I understand what it feels like to be shunned. You can tell me. Confide in me?"

She said it like a question, but Luna barely heard the almost hopeful note to her tone. Her attention was trained on the bowed shoulders of the boy – a boy? In a girl's bathroom? How odd – as he leaned heavily before the mirror. Those shoulders shook. His whole back trembled and his knees seemed to knock.

"It won't help," the boy said. "What would telling anyone do? You can't help me."

"Draco," Myrtle moaned. "Don't say that. I can _help_ you. Just _tell_ me."

Luna blinked. She stared. She cocked her head, curious, and then -

She turned. She left the bathroom. She paused only long enough to pull the door closed behind her and cast a simple locking spell that would only be accessible from the inside. Then, hitching her bag higher onto her shoulder, she set off skipping down the corridor once more.

Draco Malfoy was a bully. Luna's friends thought he was a horrible person, and maybe he was. Mostly. Maybe he was a hateful bully, and cruel, and deserved to be glared at and spoken of in whispers. But Luna realised, much as she did for every other bully she'd encountered, that maybe there was more to the story than met the eye.

No one bullied for no reason, after all. Draco just had his, and for Luna… that was enough. He was only human.


	11. Tick Tock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some moments in time lingered. Remus had many of those moments.  
> His memory of Sirius was one of them.

It was impossible. Inconceivable. Nothing should hurt this much and not leave his chest gaping open as though it had been carved with a butcher's knife.

Nothing — and all he could do was watch.

Blood pumped behind his eyes. A fierce, violent throbbing that seemed to tremble down his jaw and set his chin to shaking. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, and all because… because…

Around him, the sounds of battle: brutal and vibrant, vivid with the splatter of magic flung in fierce aggression. The vibrant light soared in a passionate juxtaposition to the tragedy. He hardly saw it. He hardly felt it, because before him, between the floating tresses of thick drapes, a macabre mimic of antique curtains, he was… gone.

Impossible.

Inconceivable.

Everything hurt, ached, thrummed through him with a vengeance the likes of which his lycanthropy had never struck within him. This passed deeper than his bones. It tore more fiercely at his muscles. It hurt, it _hurt, it hurt_ —

Remus closed his eyes. He'd lost another one, and somehow it was even worse this time.

* * *

Tick… tick… tick…

Remus hated clocks. They were so consistent. So enduring. Nothing stopped their systematic counting but for the whirring death of powered batteries. Wizarding clocks were even worse because they didn't even have bloody batteries.

Tick… tick… tick…

How long had he been sitting in the shabby little dining room? Remus didn't know. He hadn't been counting but to absently notice the ticking of that damned clock. Was it hours? Days? It could have been years for all he knew. Years, and yet those moments in the Department of Mysteries still welled before his eyes.

Hurt. It hurt. It throbbed, and ached, and —

Tick… tick… tick…

Remus stared at the dining table. He stared at his fingers, his nails little more than claws, as they picked at the pockmarks in the old wood. He stared, but all he could see was a smile. All he could hear was a laugh that was broken jarringly by that _bloody_ ticking.

A smile.

A laugh.

And he would never — Remus would never hear it —

He closed his eyes, but it did him little good.

Tick… tick… tick…

Remus should be with Harry, but he didn't leave. He couldn't bring himself to. That he'd lost again, that he hadn't been fast enough _again_ — Remus needed to be alone. Alone with an infuriatingly persistent clock, his dingy dining room-kitchen, and the emptiness of his flat that barely warranted the title for how shabby it was. Alone was good, even if it hurt. Alone, no one could intrude upon the thoughts and memories that stirred just outside of reach, just beyond that smile, that laugh, that bark of a flung curse as it struck him in the chest and pushed him through…

Tick… tick… tick..

But, of course, it wouldn't happen. Remus wouldn't be left alone. He should have expected that.

The door opened behind him, and it echoed resoundingly. Remus didn't straighten from where he hunched over himself, bowed over his ugly table in his ugly little flat. He heard her, though. He smelt her scent as she edged into the room, his senses sharpened as ever, even through his numbing grief. She scuffled her shoes, a toe bumping against the wall. The sound of the leaning table alongside Remus' front door clattered slightly, as though she'd bumped into that, too. How she managed, Remus didn't know. He didn't really care.

"Remus?"

Opening his eyes, Remus stared down at his hands once more. They were curled like claws, but powerless as his wolven paws weren't. Useless. They couldn't _do_ anything. They couldn't even protect —

"Remus? Are you here?"

More scuffling. More shuffling of footsteps. He heard her as she edged down the narrow, gloomy hallway behind him. He heard the trail of her fingers on the wall as she paused beside the doorway into the cramped, cluttered living room, and continued on further. He heard as she paused at the door into the kitchen, too, but he didn't raise his gaze.

Swallowing thickly, grasping for strength that Remus knew he'd never possessed — because _he'_ d been the strong one, him and James, not Remus — he cleared his throat. "Is something the matter?"

His voice was hoarse. Husky. A catch quirked his last word, making it squeak almost like a teenage boy's. Remus didn't care. He wasn't sure he'd ever truly care about anything again.

"I was just…" She edged into the room, and the slight catch in her step bespoke tripping over her own feet as she was prone to. Remus almost smiled at that; surprisingly, impossibly, he almost smiled, even if he'd never felt further from humour in his life. "I just wanted to make sure you were alright."

It was a herculean effort, but Remus managed to raise his head. With the barest of turns, he peered over his shoulder to where Tonks stood in the doorway. Her shoulders were hunched, her face closed and pale and ridiculously young. Her hair was the kind of dark black better suited to a funeral, and Remus momentarily loathed it before his rage dissipated into nothing.

She blinked at him with wide, owlish eyes. Her lips parted before closing again, teeth biting cruelly hard. "Remus?"

Sighing, Remus attempted another smile. It failed, but that didn't wholly matter. "I'm fine, Tonks," he murmured.

"Remus, I —"

"I'm fine. Really." He swallowed again, just as ineffectively as before. "Are you?"

Tonks was a strong girl. She was strong, fierce, and animated like an eternal child. But in that moment, her face crumpled only further. Her brow furrowed and tears welled, her lips trembling where they were still captured between her teeth. "I'm so sorry, Remus," she whispered.

Remus couldn't do this. He couldn't. He had his own mourning to battle again, a grief that he doubted would ever leave him. It was young, raw, and he could still feel the stabbing pain of Sirius' departure cleaving his chest. No one would replace him, and no one would fill the space he'd left behind even partially. Remus had to come to terms with that. He couldn't… for Tonks, he couldn't offer the comfort she needed.

But he turned anyway. Insurmountable pain flooded through him, but he turned, and he held out a hand to her. In his dingy little kitchen, snot already beginning to bubble from her nostrils as the tears erupted, Tonks dissolved into blubbering as she all but threw herself upon him. Remus was smothered, Tonks' arms curling around his neck, her funeral-black hair clogging his nostrils. He let himself be held, and if he couldn't quite hold her back… well, she didn't seem to notice.

Remus was broken. He didn't know how he would ever recover from such a pain. What he'd shared with Sirius… it hadn't been romance. It hadn't been friendship. It hadn't even been brotherly, because it was all of that and more. And for Remus, there was no overcoming that. What was the point in smiling again when there was nothing to smile about?

On the wall, the discordant, eternal ticks of the clock sounded in their stoic persistence.

Tick… tick… tick...


	12. Riding the Wave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not everyone loved Lily Evans. For some, the deficient comparison struck just a little too close to home.

When the gossip welled too thick and too fast, there was no fighting it. Some tried, and they fell beneath the overflowing waves, smothered and sinking.

Roberta Davis knew better. She knew it was far better to ride those waves and use them to bolster herself higher that to let herself succumb.

"What the bloody hell does she do to her hair?" the whispers would say. "Do you think she charms it so blonde? And it's so… _poofy_. She looks like an idiot."

Did Roberta really look like an idiot? Possibly. Or at least a lot of her female classmates thought so. The boys seemed to like her hair well enough; she'd heard admittedly pathetic poems waxed about how it looked like 'spun gold' and was 'gloriously luminous', which was a little ridiculous. Charmed hair was about as far from glorious as could be. If anything, it did barely a better job than manual bleaching.

"Merlin, could she stick out her chest any more?" other whispers would sniff disdainfully. "She's basically shoving her boobs in everyone's faces. Have some self-respect, for Merlin's sake."

So Roberta was well-endowed. She would use that to her advantage. _Some_ people liked it.

"Her lips are so fat. She looks like a duck, pouting like that all the time."

That one was funny. A duck? Well then, Roberta would be a duck wearing bloody red lipstick to make herself stand out even more. Besides, _some_ people liked her lips. And how she smiled. And what else she could do with them that was better explored behind closed doors.

Was Roberta oblivious to the gossip? Not in the slightest. Did it hurt her? Of course not. She wouldn't let it. Not anymore. She would style her hair to charmed-blonde perfection, paint her face so she looked like a doll, and wear a shirt a size too small and her skirt too short. She would drape herself in the simple, cheap jewellery that she'd received as gifts from more passing interests than she could count in the moments that she was adorned before being cast aside. But she wouldn't let it affect her. She would ride that wave of gossip and soar over the sneers and glares and whispered curses flung at her back.

For at the top of that wave, Roberta could see damn far. She had control. She was exactly where she wanted to be - which just happened to be where she needed to be, too.

"Davis, you cow! How _could_ you?"

Roberta paused in step in her departure from the Great Hall. The sounds of breakfast still buzzed behind her, most of her fellow Slytherins still idling over toast and juice, but it didn't trouble her. Roberta didn't have the friends to wait for the company of, or to accompany her from the hall.

Turning, she glanced over her shoulder to a pair of Gryffindor girls in her own year as they all but ran towards her. Or Maria Thimbleton ran, sights fixed and spearing down the aisle like an arrow shot from a bow. The other one, Lily Evans, trailed after her friend, frantically whispering in her ear as she tugged on her arm. She appeared to be attempting to cease her friends' headlong charge, her eyes flashing towards Roberta in something almost like apology.

Roberta didn't want an apology. She didn't like many of her classmates, but Lily Evans was one she particularly detested. It was more than because she was a Gryffindor. More than because Evans was a teacher's pet, and smart, and pretty, and loved by just about everyone. It was more even than that she'd made a fool of Severus Snape, which, despite being a Slytherin, few enough people in their House cared about anyway.

Roberta cared. Severus had been an outcast, just like her. But Evans had ruined what potential relationship - friendship or otherwise - that could have formed between them, and all because he was strung up by his pining. Honestly, Evans had abandoned their friendship months ago; he should move on already.

_Not that he's going to. I don't even know why I care, since he's such a miserable person, but…_

Shrugging Severus from her mind and swallowing the urge to glare at Evans, Roberta folded her arms across her chest. She pinned Thimbleton with a flat stare and pursed her lips. She knew almost all the other girls hated that, just as much as most of the boys liked it. "What sin have I committed now, Thimbleton?"

"You know bloody well what you've done," Thimbleton spat, hissing like the kitten cousin of the lion she supposedly was. "Don't try to act all innocent."

What had Roberta done? Well, there was a plethora of things, naturally. She'd sweet talked her way out of a detention with Slughorn the previous week. She'd cheated on their Transfiguration exam last term. She'd been out after hours only two nights before, and it mattered little that she hadn't been _alone_ in being out. If anything, the scandal of being with someone would make it only worse.

Thimbleton, the proud Gryffindor that she was, could have a problem with any one of those things. Or all of them and more, for that matter. Roberta didn't really care. Just as she didn't care that heads were turning her way and staring with open interest, conversations dying to watch their argument as though it were a stage performance. She'd long ago shrugged aside embarrassment for being the object of disdainful fascination.

"I've never feigned innocence in my life, Thimbleton," Roberta said, smiling just so in a way she knew would make just about any boy blush. "But pray tell, what have I done that offends you so greatly now?'

"You know," Thimbleton began, pointing an accusing finger, only to have Evans interrupt her.

Evans interrupted her, reaching for her outstretched arm to tug it down. "Maria, please," she murmured.

"No, Lily, I'm not going to let this go. It's _wrong_." She shot a venomous glare towards at Roberta that only made Roberta smile wider. "And she's a Slytherin to boot. She shouldn't be sullying a Gryffindor."

 _Sullying?_ Roberta thought to herself. She had to bite back a laugh. Then she shook her head. _And I've never had a Gryffindor before. Where'd she hear that nonsense from? What fresh gossip is this that I've yet to encounter?_

"Maria," Evans reattempted.

"Lily, she's a tart who hasn't had her legs closed since the day she stepped into Hogwarts."

"Thank you, Thimbleton," Roberta said, cocking her head coyly. "I appreciate that you've noticed my efforts."

Thimbleton scowled do fiercely her heavy brows seemed set to fall into her eyes. "Shut up! Just shut up. Go and take yourself somewhere else and stop trying to ruin other people's happy relationships."

"Gladly," Roberta said, turning on her heel to start from the Great Hall once more. The markedly quieter Great Hall, she noticed absently. Most of the students in the surrounding tables had fallen into watchful silence. Roberta didn't care. Just as she didn't care what it was that had really gotten Thimbleton's panties in a twist -

"You stay away from James Potter, you hear!" Thimbleton burst out before Roberta could fully escape the hall. "Stay away from him. He's interested in _Lily_ , not you and your - your -"

"Maria, _please_ ," Evans said once more, and as Roberta glanced once more over her shoulder, surprise welling, Evans met her gaze with open apology. "I'm really sorry, Bette. Please, don't take it to heart. She's just upset because of what she heard from the girls in class, and… and with her own boyfriend being such a sleeze at the moment… this couldn't have happened at a worse time, and -"

Roberta turned sharply on her heel and strode from the room. She was scowling before the sudden clamour that followed her departure had even erupted. Understanding chased her, and she cursed Maria for the blame. She was clearly stinging from her own stupid boyfriend seeking satisfaction elsewhere. Why was it solely Roberta's fault that the stupid Ravenclaw boy had tried to slip into her bed?

But that wasn't the worst part. Not by half. Roberta could handle the gossip and the hatred from a fellow woman spurned. She could handle the sneers of disdain and the open leers of those who eyed her so directly she could practically hear their hungry thoughts. She could even handle being treated like a toy by the foolish boys and occasional girls of their year who just wanted to 'try it' and sought her out because she was, so the rumours went, the school bike.

Roberta could own that. She could ride that wave, and in riding it, she didn't get hurt when those same boys and girls who stared at her with awed, adoring eyes in the privacy of darkness and closed doors, their hands tentative and wondering as they touched where their blissfully immature minds had only ever imagined, turned their noses up at her the following day.

What Roberta couldn't stand was people who treated her differently. Those few who looked upon her with pity, and maybe even sympathy. She couldn't stand the Lily Evans' of the world who looked like they truly cared that she might be upset by offhanded words and spitting, shunning dismissal.

Roberta hated Lily Evans. She _detested_ her, and she almost wish she had jumped James Potter just to make her cry. But worst of all was that she thought she thought she might understand what Severus Snape saw in her. Why he wanted her back so badly, even if only as a friend. She knew why Potter was interested in her, and why he'd been pining after her for years.

Worst was that, even though Roberta hated her, she kind of wished that she had a friend like Lily Evans too.


	13. Without Solace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's childhood was never blissful and joyful. Some memories, however, stood out more than others.

To a child, there were few sounds more rousing, more melodious, and more utterly captivating than the wailing chimes of an ice-cream van. Heads would rise, eyes would widen, and like a Pavlovian dog: mouths would water in anticipation.

For Harry Potter, it was no different, even if he'd never partaken in the fruits that accompanied that melody. The Dursleys might shower Dudley with the petty cash to dash outdoors and chase after the van with it's tooting horn and whining music, ambling with his rolling gait, but Harry wasn't allowed. He wasn't _supposed_ to, because what could he offer the Ice-Cream Man in place of chipped coins?

For a seven year old boy, the promise of ice-cream was _the absolute_. It was the number one. And on Christmas Eve, even as snow fell and frost fogged the windows to muffle the street beyond the living room window, anticipation still drew a tingle to his fingers and enthusiasm to his feet.

Harry waited. He'd been waiting all day. There was no rhyme or reason to the passage of the Christmas Ice-Cream Man, so it was a chance there one moment and gone the next. Harry had completed his chores already. He had raced through scrubbing up after dinner, packing away the dishes, and wiping down the benchtops. He'd helped his aunt tidy away for the evening when the relatives would descend, because that was what he was supposed to do. He was a _good_ boy today, even if his aunt didn't tell him so. She didn't tell him he wasn't, which was almost the same thing.

In the comfortably warm living room, fireplace crackling behind him and the scent of artificial pine Christmas tree – dusty from the attic and spruced up with too many false perfumes – Harry perched in the alcove at the window. He peered out at each car that trundled past, slowed by the slick roads with wipers skittering across their windscreens. Harry touched his fingers to the glass time and time again, wiping the fog away from the vague reflection of his face just so he could peer beyond.

The garden, covered in a spread of untouched snow.

The shrubs, lining the picket fence and sagging beneath their own blanket of snowfall from the day that had already begun to drift into night.

The gutter, thinly awash with sludge, and the road itself, glossy from rain that couldn't quite freeze into snow.

Harry's breath made a fogged mess of the image, and he wiped it away with a scrub of his hand once more.

It came at six o'clock. Six o'clock almost on the dot, and Harry knew because he'd been learning time at school and he remembered the hours. The clock had barely struck when he heard it.

The whine. The clatter. The hum of a distant engine gradually approaching and the toot of a horn to bring scarf-wrapped and mittened children dashing into the streets in an excitable frenzy. This was the day. This was _it_. The one day of the year that the Ice-Cream Man wouldn't turn him away because he didn't have a pocket-full of pennies.

Harry was scrambling from his seat in the alcove without thought. He heard his aunt in the kitchen, heard her call something to his cousin, but he barely heard her. He felt a grin spread across his face, and he was tripping and stumbling from the living room almost before he'd properly climbed to his feet at all.

That stumble — it cost him as he would always remember.

His aunt's voice called. His uncle shouted something across the length of the house in return. And his cousin… Harry heard his cousin thundering down the stairs and even without precognitive abilities he felt his heart sink. It was almost as though he knew.

"He's here, Mum, he's here!" Dudley cried, as though he didn't have ice-cream for sweets every other night.

"Go and get him, Dudders," Petunia called from the general direction of the kitchen. "You don't want all the other girls and boys to get it all and leave you none."

Harry spun himself into the hallway the moment his cousin thudded from the last step directly in front of him. It was all he could do to skid to a stop before crashing into him directly. Dudley was big, and Harry was small, and experience told him what that meant. It meant Dudley always got his way.

Dudley's face was flushed with boyish excitement. He beamed down at Harry, and it wasn't a nice smile. It wasn't nice at all. Harry expected the shove to his chest that all but toppled him over even before it came.

"You're not allowed any," Dudley said, his smile growing smug. "Is he, Mum?"

"What was that?" Petunia called, but Dudley ignored her. With another nudge, he pushed Harry backwards a step, backwards down the hallway, and because he was bigger, because he was stronger, Harry could only stumble backwards. A step. And then another.

" _You're_ not allowed any, Harry," Dudley said. "It's only supposed to be for good boys and girls, and even Santa knows you're not a good boy."

"But -" Harry began.

And then Dudley shoved him. Again. One last time, and that was the time that meant the most. Harry tripped backwards, feet catching upon one another, and stumbled against the door of his cupboard. His open cupboard, with its open door. It was barely an effort for Dudley to elbow him sidelong into the little cave, and —

And Dudley was bigger.

He was stronger.

Harry fell backwards onto the thin excuse of a bed, head cracking on the wall behind him. He gasped, bit his lip to keep from crying out, and immediately straightened. It wasn't like _that_ hadn't happened before. It wasn't like Dudley didn't push him into his cupboard every day, at every opportunity, just because he could.

Dudley loomed in the doorway, his smile still spread, and peered down at Harry. "Maybe if you're a bit better next year, Harry, you'll be allowed to," he said, and that was it. That was all Harry heard further, Dudley's words discordant against the chiming of the approaching ice-cream van. Then the cupboard door was closing, the lock clattering, and darkness fell upon Harry's little cave that he hated as much as he found solace in it.

There was no solace to be found that night, however. That night Harry hated his cupboard, and its door, and the lock upon that door, more than anything.

He heard when the ice-cream van drew to a temporary pause just outside the Dursley's house. He heard an outburst of childish laughter that could have been Dudley's but he wasn't sure. He heard more laughter, the echo of a man speaking, and then the toot of a horn.

Harry heard it all from his little cupboard. In the darkness, the chill that felt colder than the snow-laden night outside, because he couldn't bring himself to switch on the little lightbulb overhead. He couldn't find the courage to curl into the uncaring wrap of his blankets.

Harry had missed out. Again. It would have been nice if it were anything new, but…

 _Next year_ , he told himself, even as he felt his lip tremble to the merry music of the ice-cream man's retreat. _I'll get it next year_.


	14. Place Your Bets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The students of Hogwarts were generally fairly cluey when it came to the goings-on of their professors. Or at least they thought they were. Minerva McGonagall knew better that some cards should be held a little closer to her chest when she played her games.

A hush fell over the Transfiguration classroom. Minerva could almost hear the bated breath. Eyes widening as heads turned towards the two boys shooting daggers at one another across the room. It was perhaps a good thing that third years lacked the capacity for using wandless magic with any real skill, for otherwise, Minerva considered she would likely have a pair of dead bodies on her hands.

"Potter," she said curtly, and a second later, "Malfoy."

No response. Eyes still stared, heads still turned. Granger looked to be turning blue for how she held her breath. And the boys… yes, they definitely would have killed one another by now.

"Potter," Minerva snapped again. "Malfoy. Detention with me tonight."

That got their attention. Glaring eyes swung towards Minerva and she met them both with a shrewd stare of her own. Potter, so like his father, seemed to be all but trembling in place from frustration, while Malfoy, ever the presumptuous pureblood, seemed uncertain whether he was to flush in fury or pale at the thought of what a detention notice to his family would look like.

 _It serves them both right, of course_ , Minerva thought to herself as a professor should never admit to thinking. _They're both as bad as one another. And to think that one of them is in_ my _House…_

Underlying her indignation, however, was a flicker of triumph. The barest candle of victory that was rapidly growing in brightness. A darting glance towards the clock hanging from the back wall, and it was almost a struggle for Minerva to withhold a smile.

That wouldn't do. Not at all. Detentions were supposed to be serious, but this…

Victory certainly did taste sweet.

Remarkably – and yet not unexpectedly, for when the first volatile explosion between Potter and Malfoy had passed, the rest of the class was usually barely short of sedate – third year Transfiguration passed without another hitch. Minerva maintained her schooled facade, eyeing her students as she shunted parchments and quills into their bags before scurrying from the room. The two boys in question were hastening in their own retreat, still shooting deathly glares at one another, but they dutifully ground to a halt with a word.

"Potter. Malfoy. Detention in my office at seven o'clock this evening. Do I make myself clear?"

Potter's eyes narrowed. Malfoy's nose tipped into the air.

"I said, do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Professor," Potter murmured in what Minerva could almost swear was his father's voice. Malfoy was a split second behind and hissed out his own compliance.

And then they were gone. The doorway stood empty behind them, and Minerva sat at her desk with her hands folded and back straight. In the emptiness of her classroom, she finally let her smile spread.

* * *

The Headmaster's Office was an oddity-and-a-half, Minerva had always thought. First of all, it was round, which made no sense in terms of making the most of the wall space. For another, Albus had cluttered it with so many miscellaneous artefacts that the air positively thrummed with vibrating magic. And that was to say nothing of the Headmaster himself where he sat behind his wide spread of a desk, smiling benignly, expectantly, for whomever might step through the door.

To any other adult witch or wizard, the sheer force thrumming through the room might be overwhelming, but not Minerva. She'd visited far too often to allow it to faze her. Intimidation was even more sparsely spread with triumph riding upon her shoulders.

She stepped inside the doorway, expression carefully serene, and made a show of closing the heavy door behind her. Albus watched her. She made a further show of crossing the room in slow, long strides, and Albus watched her still. When she paused just before his desk, it was to peer down at his old, wrinkled face, the smile lines all but swallowing the years of frowning. She met his gaze.

 _That_ was when she let her smile spread once more.

Albus' eyes sparkled as he sat back in his chair. His elbows propped upon the arms of his chair, fingers steepled together beneath his chin. "Ah. I see."

"Yes."

"I take it you won?"

"By a landslide, Albus. You always underestimate them."

Albus cocked his head, his lips quivering slightly with the beginnings of his own smile. "By how grossly did I err this time?"

Minera planted a hand upon the desk before her. "Three minutes and thirteen seconds."

Albus' lips trembled. "Surely not."

"Would you care to have a peek at the memory."

"No, surely not. I have more faith in the young minds of the upcoming generation." As Minerva raised her eyebrows, he finally broke fully into a smile, chuckling with a crinkle of his eyes. "Three minutes?"

"And thirteen seconds, yes."

Albus shook his head. "Will they ever learn, do you think?"

Minerva raised a hand in a vague gesture. "Do you want them to? Don't lie to me, Albus. I know you get your entertainment from such speculations."

Albus chuckled again. "You know me too well, my dear."

For a beat, Minerva stood expectantly. She waited. Albus waited in turn. She quirked an eyebrow, and then… "Do I truly have to ask, Albus?" She held her open palm before herself. "If you would?"

The tug of a drawer opening. The tinkle of a galleon-laden sack. Minerva's hand dipped as Albus placed the winnings in her palm. She curled her fingers and nodded her satisfaction.

"Learn for future reference, Albus," she said. "As their professor, I know best. And I am telling you: so long as Potter and Malfoy have a say in the matter, they will always be at one another's throats."

"How delightful," Albus said, smile stretching wider.

"For me?" Minerva jiggled the sack in her hand. "Certainly." Then she turned on her heel and strode in long steps from the room, just as she had countless times before.

It might be cruel, yes. It might even be morally wrong. For Minerva, it was no secret that Albus kept their little bets solely between themselves. But…

The life of a professor with a motley crew of gnashing pupils constantly at war with one another had to have some perks. Right?


	15. Silent Warfare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is an age-old war waged between creatures, and when magic-induced intelligence is added to the mix, disaster is sure to follow. Crookshanks was, after all, a bloody smart cat. He knew how to win a war.

The corridors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were channels of darkness after hours. The portraits slumbered, the walls groaned, and the whisper of wind breathed from an untouchable source sighed in nearly silent breaths.

But all was not still. All was not wholly silent.

Slinking through the corridors on feather light feet, He paused at a corner. He could feel it, could hear it – the intruder into what was _His_. It had no right to be in His castle. He would tolerate the presence of others – those of fur and feathers, those with the leathery skin that were Not Good To Eat – but this intruder.

This was wrong. It was bad. And He wanted it out.

Peering around the corner, He strained his ears for a hint of that telling sound. The barest of squeaks, the scuffle of a runner beneath feet, the scamper of an intruder that knew it was unwelcomed. A pause. A long, long pause. And then…

Nothing.

Crookshanks slipped around the corner and slunk along the corridor on his silent feet. _He_ could be quiet. The castle knew Him, respected Him, understood that He was a protector of sorts to the creatures and intruders that Shouldn't Be Here. The magical ones didn't know. They didn't understand, couldn't sense it, but He –

Crookshanks knew. He knew all too well. He'd known from the very moment he'd laid eyes on the stain of a creature. Filthy, pitiful, stinking…

Another corner, and another pause. He waited. He sniffed. He twitched his ears and peered with narrowed eyes into the darkness. It was not so impregnable to his own eyes, and not only because He was Cat. He was better than Cat. His girl, his silly, wonderful girl – she barely knew. He was special, and He would protect his silly girl. She didn't know.

A corner.

A stairwell.

And then…

It started as a squeak. The barest whisper on the edges of His hearing, barely discernible, but He knew. Crookshanks paused, foot raised, ears pricked. He paused, and that foot slowly lowered, barely brushing the ground upon which He stood.

Another squeak.

Another whisper.

A hint of scent, of flavour on the air. And then –

He dove for the corner. In a flurry, a scramble of feet and the launching propulsion that not even Cat could accomplish, He threw himself around the corner and leapt upon the smell. Upon the contamination. Upon the _intruder_ of what was _His_ castle.

The rat was big. It was ugly, smelly, filthy and _wrong_. Crookshanks knew this, had always known this. And that rat, that _creature_ –

It twisted beneath His paws. It writhed and roiled, slick and wily, and He sunk his claws in. There was a scramble. There was a roll, and He was tossed to the ground, was snapped, was slashed, was cursed in a violent tirade of indignant squeaks that were not quiet. They weren't silent. The corridor rang with it. It seethed with the fury of the intruder, of its wrongness.

Crookshanks slashed. He swiped. He struck the creature, claws bared, and felt fur give beneath his touch. He launched himself forwards, lunged –

And crashed into the wall rather than warm flesh. The wily creature evaded. It twisted like the snake that it was, the permeating stink invading His castle, and it dodged. Faster than it should have done, faster than its bulk that wasn't just Rat but was something more, it darted into the shadows of the corridor. In seconds, the scuttle of its escape was smothered by darkness.

Crookshanks hissed. He bared his teeth in frustration and cursed the evil, sickening stench of the creature that so eluded him. Then, with a grumble of fury only further enraged, He tore through the sleeping corridors of His castle and gave chase.

The battle was not won by flight. He would show the intruder that much.

* * *

"How many years has it been that you've played this and you still lose every time?"

Hermione glanced up from her book towards where her boys played. They _should_ have been studying, and by all rights she should have made them, but instead, the familiar, scarred spread of Ron's chessboard was propped between them.

Harry shrugged expansively as he dutifully helped his shattered chess pieces pick themselves back up from their discard and reassemble as though they hadn't just been blasted into pieces by one another. It was a terribly violent game, in Hermione's opinion. She wasn't supportive of violence without just cause, and even if it was just game pieces, it didn't feel _justified._

"I guess I'm just not strategically minded?" Harry said, more like a question than an explanation.

Ron shook his head mournfully, nudging his own pieces back to their squares. "No one should really be this bad, Harry."

"Well, apparently I am."

"You're smart, though, so I don't get it."

Hermione sniffed, momentarily closing her book. "I don't think it necessarily has anything to do with smarts."

Both Ron and Harry glanced towards her at her words. Harry raised an eyebrow as though confused. Ron blinked blankly, then nodded knowingly. Only a second later, however, he was frowning. "Oi, are you calling me dumb?"

Hermione sighed. _Honestly, he's just so…_ "No, Ronald, I'm not calling you dumb."

"Really?" Ron straightened the last of his pieces as he twisted more fully towards her. "'Cause it kind of sounded like –"

Just what it sounded like, Hermione would never know. In a surprising burst of squeaks and flailing limbs, hairless tail striking the air like a propellor, the distinctive form of an overlarge rat threw himself onto Ron's shoulder. Ron flinched, but that flinch held nothing on the full-body stagger that he somehow managed even when seated as a beast of ginger hair crashed into him a split second later.

Ron shrieked.

Harry exclaimed and scrambled backwards.

The chessboard scattered, indignantly wailing pieces flung amok.

And Hermione could only stare. Stupefied, she bore witness to a frankly vicious wrestling match between a similarly shrieking, wailing, and writhing rat and her own cat. She heard Crookshanks squawk, heard a hiss and a snarl. Another squeak, a tumble of ginger fur and twisting limbs, and then –

They were gone. So fast it was almost as though they had Apparated, Scabbers and Crookshanks fled the room. Hermione only caught a glimpse of orange disappearing into the third year boys' dormitory as indication of Crookshanks' passage. And then – nothing. Silence.

For a beat, Hermione stared at where her cat had disappeared. She barely breathed into the lull that had fallen between herself and the boys. Then, slowly, slowly, she turned towards them both.

Ron was staring, wide-eyed. Harry was blinking in confusion as though he'd been struck over the head. And for whatever reason, Hermione felt the barest touch of… what? Satisfaction? That shouldn't be right.

"Well?" Ron said, abruptly finding his tongue.

"Well…" Hermione began. Then she sighed as a sudden flush rose in Ron's cheeks. "Alright, Ron. I'll be the one to go and get him. _Again_."

"Again? You act like this is a bad thing that _you_ have to go and stop your ruddy beast? He's attacking Scabbers, and he should bloody well be…"

Hermione ignored Ron after that. Placing her book firmly in her seat, she skirted the couch to trot up the stairs to the boys' dormitory. It was always the same, but that was how cats and rats were supposed to be, wasn't it? That kind of violence…

Hermione didn't necessarily approve, and she would rescue Scabbers, but at least it was explainable. Right?


	16. Misers of Pretty Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before it all, before there was a war, or a Dark Lord, or even a broken child, there was a woman. A desperate woman who sought only a little help.

There is a place. A single place, in a single alley, that is passed with sidelong glances that as often rolled as they did dart away nervously. Derision or wariness: there were only two ways to consider Borgin and Burkes.

And that was exactly how the keepers of the dusty old antique store liked it.

Mr Borgin was the financier. The officiate. The brains behind the establishment. He kept his claws upon his purse in an iron grasp and glared back at those passers-by with a narrowing of his own eyes. Wariness could go two ways, and it wasn't through trusting his dubious clientele that he'd maintained the gloomy little store for as long as he had.

It was Mr Burke who was the marketeer, however. Mr Burke who spoke to those clients. It was Burke who smiled a gap-toothed grin of questionable greeting, that coaxed his upstanding and low-lying customers through his shadowed door, and plucked the coins from their desperate fingers. It was Burke who was so practiced at drawing the treasured goods from desperate souls into his grasp and leaving those scavenging fools with a pittance as they fled from the ominous depths of his store.

It was Burke who greeted Merope Gaunt as she stepped through the doorway into his clutches.

She was a thin woman. Never was a name more appropriate than Gaunt for the woman who was little more than a girl. Her face was thin, wan, cheeks hollow and eyes sunken into pits of shadows. The hood of her cloak didn't quite manage to hide the lank tendrils of her hair, haphazard and hanging around her face. She clutched at the lapels of her robes, pinning them to herself as she slipped from the street of Knockturn Alley and into Burke's all-seeing eyes.

Burke was a bloodhound when it came to a deal. He could smell wealth, could taste the gold of a galleon like a flavour on the air. Regardless of how the purebloods and old families masked themselves in their drab wear and hid their faces, he could sense it. He knew how far he could push to strike a deal.

Merope Gaunt was not one of those people.

Rain hissed in a pattering downpour outside of Borgin and Burke's, nearly overwhelming the fragile tinkle of the bell that sounded when the girl entered. She started as the door slammed closed behind her, spinning like a startled deer towards the exit and clutching pale hands to her robes all the tighter. Droplets cascaded down her hood to dribble onto the floor, sliding sleekly off her narrow shoulders.

Burke glanced up from his counter. The marvel of a gadget, a reworked necklace with something of a nasty surprise for the unwitting wearer, was an ugly piece, but that hardly mattered. Burke didn't deal in 'pretty' things. Such pretties were reserved for the brighter streets of Diagon Alley.

He squinted across the room towards the girl as she trembled slightly – from the cold or wariness, he didn't know – and slowly lowered his tweezers from where he'd been picking at the necklace. He regarded the girl with a shrewd eye as she turned slowly back towards the store, hood-shaded gaze drawing over the glass cabinets and ornate tables. Her knuckles were bone white as she grasped her robes.

Burke folded his arms. She wasn't one of them. She wasn't a desperate fish with silver scales caught on his tantalising bait. The patches in her robes weren't feigned, the tear on the edge of her cuff a sign of wear rather than deception. She wasn't worth Burke's time –

But he would wring her for all he could nonetheless.

"Can I help you?" he grumbled.

The girl flinched. A flighty thing, then; first the door, and now the very expected shopkeeper. She wouldn't be difficult to intimidate. Burke simply had to withhold himself from pushing her into instant, terrified flight.

"You got the right place, little lady?" he asked.

The girl shifted in place. Her hands visibly quivered in her fierce grasp, discernible even through the darkness of the room. She was scared, likely terrified, but she wasn't running. That, at least, was promising.

"I…" She cut herself off as her voice quavered. Burke could almost hear her swallow, fortifying herself. "I have something."

Burke tapped a nail on his counter. Was it worth the effort? "Something?"

"Something of… something of value." The girl took another tentative step into the store. A scuttle from within the drawer of the nightstand at her side drew another flinch from her, but she didn't back away. Her gaze snapped back to Burke in an instant.

Interesting.

"A family heirloom," she said.

"An heirloom?"

"An expensive one."

"Is that so?"

"Definitely." The girl nodded vigorously, almost eagerly. Her voice still quavered, but she continued with a little more force. "It warrants a marked price."

Burke cocked his head. Certainly an interesting one, he would give her that. She clearly had nothing, was as desperate as so many others, but there was surety to her words. She knew she had something of value. Just what it was and whether Burke would need to truly pay its worth remained to be seen.

"And just what family would you be from, little lady?" he said, dropping his voice just short of threatening.

The girl, edging across the room, paused in step. She was barely two strides from the front counter, and Burke could see her a little better now. A plain girl. Plainly pretty, perhaps, if she only wasn't so thin. Worry had drawn lines across her face before her time, but yes… If she was so desperate for money, he could certainly point her in a profitable direction.

"The family doesn't matter," she said. For a moment, she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Then, in a burst of motion that bespoke a desperate decision, she shoved a hand into her pocket and dragged out a clinking, tinkling chain.

Burke almost reached for his wand. He almost reached for the drawer at his right, too, inside which was a curse of darkness that would unleash pure rage upon any potential assailant that thought to threaten him or steal from his store. Burke had rarely felt the need to employ the tangible curse, but he wasn't beyond some measures.

But it wasn't needed. Not in the least. The girl slapped a chain and locket onto the counter between them, and her trembling fingers curled in the thick links with clutching need. "This," she said. "It's worth a lot – isn't it?"

The locket was old. Very old, to Burke's trained eye. An antique, and certainly worth a pretty penny. The worn pits of miniscule gemstones – emeralds, Burke, thought – painted an ornate S upon the locket's front.

Plain. Simple. Yet it breathed expense in every cut of its form and every whisper of magic that seemed to pulse from it. Burke knew. And he _wanted._

"Twenty galleons," he said nonchalantly, turning his blandest poker face upon the wide-eyed, desperate girl. "That's all it's worth and nothing more."

It wasn't, of course. It would have been worth ten times that at a minimum to one who had not the faintest idea of what it was. But Merope Gaunt was in need, and those in need settled for less than they deserved.

She left Borgin and Burkes with a thin pouch of galleons, smiling just slightly at the success of haggling Burke up to five times his initial offer. And within that gloomy little store, dust thick upon the sills of windows that were too grimy to see through, Burke smiled just as much.

Had he known he'd dealt with the to-be Lord Voldemort's mother, he might have acted differently, but probably not. Had he known that he held what would once become a Horcrux of the most powerful Dark wizard of his time, he might have thrown it away from himself, but likely not either.

Mr Burke of Borgin and Burkes was a shrewd man, a businessman, but he wasn't a good man. Regardless of the destruction his pretty little locket would rain upon the world, he was definitely not that.


	17. Changing

The steady thu-thunk, thu-thunk of the train dwindled into the squeak of tires on rails and the heavy breathing of the engine as it sighed out its final pants. Throughout the Hogwarts Express, a lull fell over the students, a suspended breathlessness that infected each and every passenger with the nervousness of first years. If anything, the First Years of that year were the least nervous of their troupe – or at least their nerves danced to a tune of a different kind.

In one cabin, the back cabin, and silent as it had been for the entire trip, they sat in stillness and persisting muteness. The rustle of a magazine in hand, the crunch of a chocolate bar of the crackle of a wrapper, were all that had accompanied them on the long, long trip from Kings Cross. Long and lonely. Ginny had never felt that kind of loneliness before.

Staring out of the window at the darkening platform, she drew a deep breath of her own. It did little to alleviate the heaviness in her chest, the weight that had settled upon her shoulders. It didn't erase the gaping emptiness of the seats alongside her, the seats that should have been filled with friends, but who would never sit in them again. Some simply wouldn't return, but others…

"It looks just the same, doesn't it?"

Dragging her gaze from the platform, from the iron filigree fence lining the wide expanse of concrete, the conductor's box seated like a squat little hut at the far end, Ginny stared at Luna. Her friend, her only returning friend, still had her magazine raised before her face, the upside-down cover flitting with animated pictures in bright colours, but for the first time in hours, Luna no longer poured over its contents. Her own gaze was turned out the darkening window, her usually vague, wistful expression touched by uncharacteristic solemnity.

Nodding slowly, Ginny returned her own gaze to the platform. "It really does," she murmured.

Somehow, she'd expected it to be different. Somehow, even though the effects of the previous year had taken place up at the distant castle atop its hill, Ginny expected evidence to smear the platform like a bloody stain. But there was nothing. The lamp posts still flickered to life as the train sank into its stagnancy. The murmur of students still gradually rose as they made an unanimous decision to alight. If she squinted, Ginny could even discern the distant swirls of smoke coiling from the chimneys of Hogsmeade residences, reminiscent of each and every other year that it had been exactly the same.

The same. Unchanging. It didn't feel right that everything should be the same. Not with everything that had happened.

Drawing another deep breath, Ginny straightened in her seat. She clapped her hands upon her thighs and turned resolutely towards where Luna still gazed wistfully, unblinkingly, out the window. Plucking the magazine from her lax fingers, Ginny tucked it under her arm and rose to her feet.

"Come on," she said with more enthusiasm than she felt. "Let's go. We can make sure to get the carriages at the front and make it to school first."

Luna turned her gaze slowly up towards Ginny. Had she always held such depth, such wisdom and heartache? Ginny didn't think so. She, ashamedly, realised that she hadn't thought Luna capable of it. Luna was bright, light-hearted, and carefree. She smiled at bullies and hummed to herself as she skipped down corridors.

Ginny realised that she hadn't heard Luna hum in a long time. She would know. They'd spent the holidays all but sleeping in the same bed.

Swallowing the lump that rose in her throat, Ginny held out a hand. "Seriously," she said, flicking her fingers. "Let's go. We can set a good example for the First Years. We're their role models now, after all."

Slowly, almost tentatively, Luna smiled. It wasn't a wide smile, not like those she used to wear, and it held none of the carefree innocence that she'd once possessed. But it was a smile, and that meant something. It meant more that Luna grasped Ginny's fingers and squeezed as though she would never let go.

Despite the voices murmuring through the train, Ginny found herself as one of the first people onto the platform. Alongside her, a cluster of students – Sixth Years, she thought – huddled and glanced around themselves with a wide-eyed, slightly haunted cast to their expressions that Ginny knew only too well. She could feel it herself.

Somehow, the sight of them – and more than that, that they turned towards Ginny and stared as though they needed her – hardened something within her. Squeezing Luna's hand back just as tightly, she nodded to their watchful group and turned along the platform. When she tugged Luna in her wake, she pretended she didn't hear the scurrying footsteps that shadowed her.

Hagrid's looming form was the same. The same as it always was. His smile wasn't, but Ginny could pretend otherwise. When he turned towards her, it still arose, a merry slice through his tangled beard that bespoke welcome and commiseration as much as it did sadness.

"Hi, Hagrid," Ginny said, pausing alongside him.

Hagrid's smile widened slightly. "Hello, Ginny. Luna. Nice ter see yer."

"And you. You had a good summer?"

"As good as can be expected, I 'spose." Hagrid's smile wavered slightly, and Ginny pretended she didn't see when the muscles in his cheeks stiffened, setting in denial of fading lightness. "Argh, but it's a new year, and we'll all be putting the past behind us, righ'?"

The lump swelled in Ginny's throat, and she could only nod in reply. At her side, Luna murmured something indecipherable and squeezed her hand. Ginny clung back just as tightly.

When Hagrid stepped past them, bellowing with the familiar cry, "First Years, this way!" she pretended it sounded the same as it always did. That the waver in Hagrid's voice was just her imagination. Steeling herself, resisting the urge to glance over her shoulder at the growing cluster of students waiting behind her as though expecting her to lead them, Ginny started towards the carriages.

She stepped off the platform.

And then she stopped.

For a moment, Ginny could only close her eyes. Oh. She'd forgotten about that. How could she forget? Clenching her jaw, it took a physical effort to peel her eyes open. In the months of the war and those afterwards, she'd wanted to turn aside so, so many times, but this… this was a challenge she hadn't anticipated. She wasn't ready for this.

"Maybe," Luna murmured at her side, "I could sit at the Gryffindor table for the feast?"

It wasn't how it was supposed to be. It wasn't how it had always been. But even if it wasn't allowed, wasn't expected, wasn't traditional, Ginny knew she needed it. Staring at the thestrals as they counted with stamps of their hoofs, hitched between the carriages, she knew she needed it. How many students would be able to see them now? It was horrifying to even consider.

"I think," she said slowly, "that would be a wonderful idea." Then, clutching Luna's hand like a lifeline, Ginny led the students of Hogwarts to their school.

It wasn't the same. It would never be the same. But then, she hadn't really expected it to be.


	18. A Masterpiece

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Quidditch League Season 6, Round 2
> 
> Position Prompt: Your story must only focus on characters who attended Hogwarts before Harry Potter. Write about the invention of a magical object, potion, or other creation.

"You ask a very great deal, Wizard."

Nodding gravely, the man regarded the goblin across the squat table. He could barely see him through the darkness of the room. It couldn't be called a shop, for it's griminess and pits of shadows silhouetting dark shapes that could have been furniture, but just as likely weren't. He didn't let himself be concerned by those shadows, or at least didn't allow himself to appear so. To venture into a goblin's workshop, however… it was a dance of puzzles and trickery. If he didn't play his hand right, he would walk out an arm and a leg less and think himself lucky.

"Will you do it?" he asked.

The goblin, one of the finest silversmiths in the known world, stroked at his chin and the thin curls of his whiskers. His overlong nails scratched in a grating sound that would have set a lesser man's teeth on edge. But not this man. This man didn't let himself be disconcerted by the goblin anymore than he did the ominous shadows in the shop. Or at least he didn't let himself appear to be.

Eyes narrowing, the goblin regarded him in return. "Who are you?" he croaked, his voice more of an accusing grumble than a question.

The man shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters. To ask such a thing but to remain anonymous – it matters a great deal."

The man shook his head slightly. "Suffice it to say that I am someone who, should you fulfill my request, could make it worth your while."

The goblin grumbled again, eyes narrowing further, and regarded the man shrewdly. He seemed to contemplate for a long time before finally replying. "A sword, you say?"

The man nodded. "Yes."

"A magical sword?"

"What other kind of sword is there?"

The goblin grumbled once more, but the man fathomed it may have even held a chuckle, the edge of amusement. "What kind indeed," he murmured. Then he straightened, rising from his seat in a manner that made him shorter than sitting had. With a hobbling step, he skirted the table to the man's side, peering up at him and deterred not in the least by their marked size difference. The man looked above him, spilling out of his seat in his sheer height and muscular bulk.

"What is it that you offer me?" the goblin asked. He was the best, after all, and the wizard knew it. He knew he couldn't approach him with a request like he had, to make 'the finest sword in your capability,' without any sound payment to back it.

The man smiled slowly. He kept his voice casual as he replied. "I hold some weight in the Wizarding world. It would be of a great benefit to you and a credit to your name should I wield a sword of your making. Of course, financial recompense will be included, but the stories of your reputation…"

He trailed off indicatively, eyeing the goblin sidelong. The goblin continued to peer up at him unblinkingly, stroking his chin with quiet little _snick-snick-snick_ s of his nails. There was just the barest gleam of hunger, an irrepressible desire, welling in his eyes that was unmistakable even through the darkness of the workshop.

The wizard waited. The goblin thought. The wizard waited some more, settling into his patience with a comfort that few considered him capable of. That characteristic was always attributed more to Helga, or to Salazar, even, but not him. Finally, his persistence proved fruitful, for the goblin ceased his quiet contemplation.

"It will cost you," he murmured, wrinkled lips pursing.

The wizard tipped his head in acknowledgement. "I know."

"Your weight in gold, at that."

"I would expect no less."

"And your word." The goblin stabbed a finger at the wizard, nail like a talon spearing fiercely. "Your word that to each and every person who asks it of you, you shall tell them that Ragnuk the First was the silversmith who crafted your sword."

The wizard's smile grew. He had him. He knew he did. With a final nod, he rose to his feet. "My word you have," he agreed, and extended his hand.

They shook upon it, and there was nothing even slightly condescending to the way the wizard dropped to his knee to do so. It was a tricky play, to bargain with a goblin, but he'd managed it. He was smart enough to do that much, at least. Oh, how Rowena would crow with delight to know that her dextrous teachings hadn't gone astray.

When he rose to his feet, he followed the goblin through the darkness of the workshop with the promise of victory already thrumming through him.

* * *

The hammer pounded. The anvil hummed and rung with each strike. The bellows heaved, pumped by their magical hand that persisted where a man's would have long since failed with exhaustion. The workshop sizzled with heat, the air visibly dripping with it.

But the goblin never stopped. He never paused in his work, and for that, the wizard could only admire him.

The hammer pounded. The anvil rung. The bellows heaved. And for three days straight the goblin worked, and worked, and worked, with the feverish attention to detail of a worker-bee buzzing crazily about its hive. He didn't even pause for a sip of water or a bite of bread. Not to close his eyes for a moment of respite, to sleep away the exhaustion and the aches that poured into the work of art he seemed to form from nowhere.

For it was. A long, silver, glowing work of art that the wizard could hardly turn away from. Sweat lathered his brow, dripping down his cheeks and into his beard, but he didn't step from the workshop to give himself reprieve of the heat. He didn't lower himself by casting a Cooling Charm over himself, nor belittle the goblin by offering to do so in turn. He watched and he waited, a hunger not unlike that which the goblin had worn at the moment of their bargain welling within him.

He watched as the steel was heated to white hot once more.

He watched as the goblin dipped it into a barrel of water, steam bursting like that from a spitting dragon at the moment of contact.

He stared keenly as the goblin fiddled and fumbled, hammered and twisted and welded, and finally retreated from his pounding work to affix the hilt in place. The wizard could only stare in rapture as the goblin inset a robin's egg-sized ruby in the very centre of that hilt. Hunger had never been so great.

When the goblin paused and, for the first time, wiped his own sweaty brow with the back of his hand, the wizard forced himself to retreat into composure. He nodded solemnly as the goblin turned towards him, though the goblin himself didn't seem to notice. He had eyes only for the creation held aloft and glowing in his hand. To the wizard, he felt the magic that pulsed from it as though it were a living being.

"It is done," the goblin whispered, pride enriching his voice with almost visual colour.

The wizard nodded. He accepted the completed treasure. And, when the time was right, he wordlessly offered the goblin his gold in a pouch that, to the unwitting eye, seemed far too small to hold the price of such a glorious weapon.

"It will be known," the wizard said, "to all who ask, it will be known that Ragnuk the First was the craftsman behind the masterpiece of this sword."

The goblin hummed flatly. He hadn't taken his eyes from the sword since he'd finished it. Not even when the wizard, drawing his wand in the goblin's presence for the first time, bedecked it in a simple sheath that seemed far too minimalistic for such a creation.

He left swiftly. That was the only way he could. In long strides, without looking back, he hastened from the workshop, slipping the sword into the folds of his robes. He could feel the watchful eyes of the goblin drilling into his back as he did so, and that feeling only sped him faster.

He knew what that stare meant. He could see that hunger, of a different kind to his own, so thickly pouring from his eyes that the goblin may as well have blurted out his intentions the moment he'd handed the sword to the wizard.

_He may have given it to me, but I will be a fool to think he won't try to take it back._

But Godric Gryffindor didn't turn back, and he wasn't scared. With his prize in hand, in the turn of a heel and a whisper of magic, he Disapparated from the creeping fingers of the goblin Ragnuk.


	19. Christmas Wishes

It was cold when Harry woke up.

The cold wasn't particularly unexpected, as the little cupboard under the stairs was excluded from the greater heat of the house, but in this instance it was. It would be early, the Dursleys would be asleep, and that meant that the heating would be on. _Should_ be on. That heating filtered just a little warmth into his cupboard, and it was enough that waking wasn't always a brutal trial.

Except for today. That day, Harry woke chilled to the bone.

Curled beneath his blanket, head buried, he listened for the hum of the heating system. The _drip-drip-drip_ of the boiler as it struggled to pump heat throughout the house, the faint whispering hiss as steam rose and funnelled through the pipes infiltrating the wall at his side. Harry listened, ears straining, but…

Nothing.

Reaching a darting hand out from the folds of his blankets, Harry snatched his glasses from the little shelf alongside his bed and tucked them into the darkness and minimal warmth within. He shoved them onto his face with half-frozen fingers and, with an effort, drawing his blankets tighter around his shoulders, he pushed himself up into a sitting position.

Silence. Utter silence. No dripping, no hissing, and no creaking from overhead as the Dursleys rose and started their day. Petunia should be up and readying breakfast. She should have already hammered on Harry's door to wake him, all but dragging him from his cupboard into the kitchen to help her as she worked. She should be—

Harry blinked. No. That wasn't right. More importantly, more significantly, Dudley should have been up. He should have been thundering down the stairs, raining dust and spiderwebs onto Harry, and filling his cupboard and the hallway beyond it with echoes of noise, enthusiasm, and abrasiveness. That was how it should have been, because that was how Dudley always was on Christmas morning. How had Harry forgotten that it was Christmas?

Shivering, his shoulders hunching, Harry tugged his blanket more tightly around his shoulders. His cupboard was dark, darker than it should have been, because he always woke up when just a little bit of light filtered under the door. Usually, his waking was even before Petunia demanded he wake up with a fist to that door and a sharp word.

But there was no light, and as Harry crawled from his bed, one hand grasping the front of his blanket around himself, it was to hear no telltale step of his aunt just outside. Hesitantly, almost nervously, for sometimes his cupboard door was locked and it never felt very nice to be locked in from the outside, Harry nudged it to open.

It swung easily with only the barest squeak of hinges. The sound was still deafening in the otherwise silent house.

Inching forwards, his skin crawling with discomfort, Harry poked his head around the frame of his cupboard. The hallway was dark, draped in the gloomy shadows of winter morning and unbroken by artificial light. Shuffling forwards a little more so Harry could peer towards the kitchen one way, and to the front door and the foot of the stairs in the other as he strained his ears for sounds of movement.

The kitchen was empty, white tiles turned grey in the darkness. The front door was closed, the bottom of the steps bare of Dudley's feet. It was simply… nothing.

A part of Harry was scared. A big part of him wondered what in the world had happened that would withhold Dudley in his race throughout the house to tear his presents open and grumble his disgust or exclaim his approval with each unveiling. The change, the abnormality, the echoing silence that dragged on, and on, and on – it was just a little scary.

But another part of Harry tingled with something very close to awe. To disbelief, but also a strange upwelling of excitement.

_Did I… make my family disappear?_

Magic wasn't real. Harry knew that. He knew because Uncle Vernon told him, and because even when sometimes something happened – like his hair growing really, really fast overnight, or him somehow ending up atop the roof of a house when he was being pursued with a terrifying vengeance – he was told that it was happenstance. That he must simply have very fast growing hair, or that he must have climbed up onto the roof, silly boy, and to climb down immediately.

Magic wasn't real, but Harry felt just the slightest upwelling of belief in that moment. As if his Christmas wish, the wish that he'd never voiced aloud because it was wrong to wish for such a thing, had come true.

_I've made my family… disappear?_

Harry clambered from his cupboard, and on socked feet, shuffled into the kitchen. It was bare and empty, not a surface touched by the remains of breakfast or a stain of juice on the very edge of the counter just as Dudley always left when he spilt a little in pouring himself a glass. The fridge hummed contentedly, the oven sat unheated and stoic, the chairs at the table tucked neatly in just as Harry had pushed them the previous night.

No Dursleys. Not a single hair of them.

The living room, draped in a reserved garment of tinsel, was just as dark and untouched. The Christmas tree, darkened from green to grey in the wan morning light creeping through the window, stood like a silent, watchful sentinel in the corner beside the fireplace, Dudley's presents still visibly poking from beneath as though too wondering just why they hadn't been torn apart just yet.

Harry wandered through the house in a stupor, clutching his blanket to his chest, the tail of it trailing after him. He absently hooked the chain back into the lock on the front door, because he was always supposed to when he was at home alone, and shuffled up the stairs. Dudley's room – empty, the sheets askew and half fallen off the bed to spill between the mess of his toys and games. The bathroom – unlit and as grey-tiled as the kitchen had been. Petunia and Vernon's bedroom stood with the door half-open and nothing but darkness within, but when Harry paused just alongside it and strained his ears, he couldn't hear Vernon's snoring as he sometimes did even in his cupboard under the stairs.

Something like a laugh slipped from Harry's lips. It tasted of excitement, of wonder, and despite the cold that flushed through him, the cold echoing the snow that fell outside and the frost that coated the windows, he felt something else in his chest swell with real joy.

_Maybe I really did. Maybe I really made them disappear._

It wasn't much, but as Harry spun on his heel and tore through the house, blanket flying behind him like a cape in his excitement, he thought that this might just be the best Christmas ever.

* * *

The Dursleys came back. Of course they did. "An emergency", Harry heard Vernon grumble to himself as he shouldered his way through the door, and "She'll be fine, Dudders" from Petunia to a visibly uncaring Dudley. Harry didn't know what had happened or who 'would be fine' but it didn't really matter. It didn't even matter that for the rest of the day Dudley wrought havoc on the house and turned it upside-down in his usual explosion of Christmas entitlement.

For that morning at least, in the company of only himself, Harry had experienced the ultimate of Christmas wonders.


	20. The Special Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Graduation was a time of change for all. But what if that change was more terrifying than liberating? Albus was facing just that possibility, and he didn't like it at all.

There was a part of Albus that was euphoric. A part of him that wanted to smile and bubble with laughter, as enthusiastic and excited as the rest of his classmates. It was a glorious day, with the sun soaring in all of its radiant heat to promise a rich, warm summer ahead, and barely a cloud smeared the sky.

Noise and laughter.

Congratulations and applause.

The murmur of the crowd that hushed only for as long as the ceremony ensued before exploding into a riot of tears and joy, parents blubbering in nostalgic remembrance of their own school graduations and wistfully smothering their children with embraces and words of reminiscence.

Albus had endured his fair share. He'd been crushed by his mother's embrace almost as soon as the ceremony had ended and the tide of family members had rushed forth like an overflowing river through a split in a fractured dam. Next was his father, all glassy-eyed despite the fact that he'd never even graduated from school himself. Then his older brother, a one-armed hug around his shoulders that almost strangled him, and his little sister, a brief squeeze before she disappeared to find her friends. His grandparents, warm and congratulatory, his aunts and uncles, his cousins – all of them.

"We're so proud of you, Albus."

"You made it all the way to the end of seventh year, which is more than can be said for James!"

"You should be very happy with yourself; your NEWTs were exceptional."

Maybe Albus should have been happy. Maybe he should have been glowing with that suggested pride, just as he could feel radiating from the classmates that withstood their own bouts of afflicted love and affection in the midst of their respective families. Maybe he should have been satisfied with his NEWT results, and that he would be given just about every opportunity here-on out, and that the prospect of stepping into an unknown future was flooded with wonders and chance endeavours that he hadn't even conceived of yet.

But Albus wasn't happy. He wasn't flooded with pride but with dread. He wasn't satisfied with his NEWTs – that damned Exceeds Expectations in Transfigurations would be the death of him when in the company of the surrounding Outstandings – and the possibility of a future he had no knowledge of, no direction in, and no comprehension of the form it would take…

Albus wasn't excited at his graduation. Rather, it was at his graduation that he understood just how big the world was and how small and comfortable it had been before the doors of possibility had been flung wide open.

Extricating himself from his family had been a challenge, but Albus had managed. Eighteen years in their company had developed within him a skill in slipping from their company, weaseling his way from the overloud bellows of his Uncle Ron's laughter, his Aunt Hermione's endless questions of "Where to now?" and words of "You've got so many possibilities to choose from, Al" that were all well intended but left him with a hollow feeling in his gut. Away from his father's gentle, slightly sad smile and his mother's hand that settled upon his shoulder again and again to offer a comforting squeeze.

He wasn't sure whether the obliviousness to his plight of his aunt and uncle was better or worse than his parents' quiet understanding. All Albus knew was that he wanted to get away from it.

The marquee set up on Hogwarts' grounds was wide and sprawling. Tables groaning beneath steaming dishes and chilled finger food, napkins stacked high alongside plates and pairs of smeared tongs. Silver plates bearing punch more often than age-restricted champagne drifting throughout the idle chatterers, and house elves slipped silently and unobtrusively between them like overly attentive servers. It was hot, and heady with the ecstacy spilling from graduates, and Albus wanted to get out of the stifling atmosphere.

So he did. Which was how he found himself perched atop a fallen log on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the dampness of dew seeping through the fabric of his robes, and staring not at the celebrations echoing from up the hill, but at the ground before him. He focused on a tuft of grass, the minute shape of an ant struggling to scramble up its length, and rested his elbows atop his knees, his chin upon his hands.

Just for a moment, escaping from the weight of change and excitement was as necessary as air. To be alone. To be alone with his thoughts. To be alone, with his thoughts, to worry in silence without prying eyes, and—

"Hey."

Startled, Albus snapped his gaze upwards. He straightened as – seemingly from nowhere – a familiar figure took a step towards him just close enough to shade him with his shadow. For a second, his face was lost to the backdrop of the sun, beaming around his head like a halo, but a moment later and Scorpius' familiar, pointed features blurred into view.

Sighing, Albus slumped once more. He dropped his gaze back down to the grass, to the ant that had acquired a companion that only seemed to be making the climb up the tuft of grass all the more difficult. "Hey," he murmured.

Scorpius stood silently before him for a beat, but though he held his tongue, his quietness spoke for itself. It bespoke understanding and camaraderie that Albus couldn't glean from his family.

Just as silently, Scorpius stepped to Albus' side and dropped onto the log seat, rocking it just gently. He was so close that his leg brushed Albus' with the motion. For another extended pause, they sat in ensuing muteness. Then, with another gentle rock of the log as he stretched his legs out before him, Scorpius sighed.

"What're you thinking about?" he asked.

"You're disrupting the ants," Albus muttered.

"Al?"

"You just went and put your foot straight through them."

"Fascinating." Sarcasm flooded Scorpius' reply, but it disappeared almost instantly. "Al? What's wrong?"

Albus stared at the string of ants, at the pair that were making a botched effort of climbing the stalk of grass for no apparent reason. All he could do was sigh heavily.

Scorpius didn't need any further expansion. "The same thing?"

"Mm."

"You still haven't decided?"

"Mm."

"About university, or maybe an apprenticeship, or… or working, or—"

"You know, laying it all out like that _really_ helps, Scor," Albus said.

Scorpius snorted. "I'm just telling you what you already know."

"Duh. Thanks. You're so helpful."

"You seem to be, what's the word…"

"Freaking out?" Albus offered, closing his eyes briefly.

"I was going to go with 'shitting yourself', but yeah, that works too. You should have seen yourself on the stage when Longbottom called you up. I've never seen you so pale."

Albus shot Scorpius a sidelong glare. "Thank you. You're making me feel so much better about making an idiot of myself in front of the whole school."

Scorpius didn't flinch at his scowl. His small smile didn't waver even slightly. If anything, he seemed to become more comfortable for the sight of it. He rocked gently into Albus' shoulder before settling against him.

"You know," he said slowly. "You don't have to worry so much."

"Right." Albus couldn't help but scoff. "It's only my whole future."

"So work it out one step at a time."

"That's not how it works, Scor." Sighing, Albus leant back against Scorpius. There was something comforting, something stabilising, about the warm weight of him so close. "Just because you've got it all sorted…"

"Yeah," Scorpius said, "and so what?"

"It's easier for you."

"How so? What's so bad?"

"It's bad," Albus said emphatically, though he couldn't help but drop his head heavily onto Scorpius' shoulder. That simple support seemed to help too. "Because I don't know what the hell to do. I don't know where I'll be in six months, or a year, or – or however long, and it's bloody terrifying not to know, Scor, because—"

"So?"

Scorpius' curious interruption drew Albus to a halt. "What?"

"So what?" Scorpius asked. Shifting slightly, he readjusted his shoulder so that Albus' cheek now rested atop it with all the comfort of a pillow rather than the bony joint that it was. "You'll work it out. One step at a time. Isn't that what all of our professors always say? It doesn't have to be now, or tomorrow, or even in ten years. You'll get there."

"Easy enough for you to say," Albus muttered, though he couldn't deny that Scorpius' words had a way of slowing the roiling thoughts plaguing his head. Why was it so much better when Scorpius said it than the professors?

"Yeah, maybe," Scorpius agreed. "But you know, however long it takes, I'll just be hanging out here right next to you to help you work it out. Alright?"

Albus didn't reply. He didn't really need to. There was far more behind Scorpius' words than simple compassion, more than a confidence boost or an off-handed comfort. Closing his eyes, Albus only hummed neutrally and let himself sit with the knowledge that, while everything else might be locked in the midst of terrifying change, some things never would.


	21. The Blood of an Englishman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie Weasley was damn good at his job. It was a shame, really, especially given that he didn't even seem to realise how many noses he pushed out of joint by being so.

"Goddammit, he's at it again."

Andreea didn't glance up at the sound of Alex's mutter. It wasn't worth it; she already knew what he'd be referring to. Instead, her head bowed over her clipboard and stump of a lead pencil in hand, she scribbled away at the chart. It was so dark that she could barely make out the white paper, let alone the printed words listed in chicken-scratch scrawl. Not that she needed to read it. Years of practice meant that she was more than familiar with the procedure.

Name.

Species.

Time of day.

The list of observations undertaken at that particular time of day – behaviours, mobility, visible degree of aggression. If the beast appeared discomforted, or lethargic. If they were blowing smoke or, worse, had proceeded to stutter sparks and fire into the cold night air, vivid orange plumes into the darkness that was broken only by the muffled green lanterns spread about the camp.

Dragons were unpredictable at best. They demanded regular updates of their status, and especially so for juveniles. The adolescent Fireball in the pen before her, a male and riled for reasons that she couldn't comprehend any better than the rest of the handlers, needed close observation even more so.

Sighing to herself, squinting as she jotted down a final note, Andreea glanced up at the pen. Within, despite the green-tinged shadows so typical of after-hours camp, she could make out the brilliant red and gold scaling of the Fireball as it twisted and writhed in whatever had caused its latest fit of disgruntlement. It was a glorious creature, befitting it's pseudonym 'the Liondragon' even at such a young age for the crested mane fanning around its neck, and Andreea would never grow tired of gazing upon it. It was simply a shame that it had to be so goddamn unruly.

"What's wrong with you?" she murmured, more to herself than to Alex, tapping the blunt tip of her pencil upon the clipboard. "If you could only tell us what's bothering you…"

"It's not the diet," Alex said, though he too sounded more as though he was speaking to himself than to Andreea. "I swear, it's not the bloody diet. I would know."

He would, too. If anyone on camp knew the basic needs of a Chinese Fireball it was Alexandrou Goga. He'd been working with them for years. It was part of the reason the young male's constant discontent was so bothersome.

"Maybe we sourced the pigs wrong," Andreea said. "If we got them from a local region –"

"No," Alex said immediately. "I know for a fact that they'll only eat the Alpine breed. There's nothing wrong with the type of pig we're feeding it."

"Maybe if we cooked it then?"

"What kind of a dragon wants its food already cooked?"

Andreea shrugged. She wasn't an expert on Fireballs like Alex, but she'd been working with dragons herself for nearly five years. A generalist was about the loosest title that could be assigned to her, but it was the one the fit the most accurately. Andreea knew how to take obs, knew what to look out for, but the finer details required the specialists.

Unfortunately, when it came to the Fireball, even the specialists didn't know where to turn.

Three years. Three whole years the Fireball had been at the sanctuary, tucked into the depths of Romania in the most diverse and well-funded residence for dragons in Europe. Three years, and ever since the Fireball had hatched it had been a problem. Never happy, unable to mix with the other males for risk of starting a fight, spouting torrents of flame into the air every other night in an announcement of his distress as soon as he was old enough to produce it at all.

There was clearly something wrong, but Andreea didn't know what it was. Neither did Alex, or the sanctuary director, or the plethora of other specialists that had been called in to take a look at him. It was frustrating, to say the least. Unendingly frustrating.

It was the third time that week Andreea had been on duty to take obs for the Fireball male. Eyeing the beast where he prowled around the walls of his enclosure, head low and swaying as though following a scent and tail lashing like a whip, she could only shake her head. He was a problem, yes, but worse than the issue of what that problem was arose that of how to deal with it. The Fireball wouldn't let anyone near it, and being the size that it was…

 _If he gets much bigger, stunning hexes won't work for him anymore._ Usually, the dragons were coached to a degree that they weren't so much tame but bowed their head to the ministrations of the sanctuary veterinarians. But the Fireball – he didn't like that. He didn't like it at all.

The prowling, the aggression, the agitation that Andreea's own obs had proven were vaguely cyclical… if she didn't know better, all of it would sum up to one very specific diagnosis, but that possibility was ludicrous. Why, it would almost be like considering –

"What's going on?"

Snapping her attention from the Fireball, Andreea swung her gaze over her shoulder. At her side, dragged from peering down at the dragon himself, Alex immediately turned as well. Andreea didn't need to look at him to know he immediately scowled. Alex didn't like the new recruit. No more than Andreea did herself.

Charlie Weasley was a study. A confusing, amicable, chatty study that bordered upon cocky. He was a big man, broad, and knew how to work. He was good with the dragons, pulled his own weight, and wasn't shy about interacting with the other dragonkeepers right off the bat. Even when most of those dragonkeepers didn't interact back, he didn't appear fazed.

Weasley was an outsider. A Englishman. Never in the history of the sanctuary had they had an _Englishman_ work with them. It somehow felt almost like a taboo. Andreea couldn't help but hate it, if more for tradition than anything else. It wasn't because Weasley's Romanian was stitled and painfully accented to the point that she cringed every time he spoke. It wasn't because of his chattiness either, though he did speak far, far to much. It was because, well…

"What're you doing here, Weasley?" Alex asked. Or grumbled, more correctly. Alex really, really didn't like Weasley.

Whether Weasley was just dumb or deliberately ignorant, he didn't appear fazed by Alex's open aggression. He only smiled, the expression bright and warm, visible in the sickly green glow of the single lantern hanging from the watchtower. He took a final step up onto the platform, striding towards the both of them, and planted himself between them as though he was entirely entitled to be there.

"I finished up over with the Opaleye early," Weasley said, folding his arms across his chest as he peered over the edge of the watchtower railing. "I figured I might just swing by."

"You finished early," Andreea said slowly, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. "There's always more work to be done, Weasley."

Again, far from fazed, Weasley flashed her a smile. "That's what I thought too, but Gheorghe let me off the hook early."

 _Probably to get rid of you,_ Andreea thought to herself. She shifted in place, edging a little along the railing to put just a tad more distance between herself and Weasley. She couldn't quite put her finger on what she disliked so much about him, but –

"He's playing up again?" Weasley said, nodding down at the Fireball where the male had just taken another pass just below them. "It's a full moon, right? Wasn't that what happened last time?"

That. That was what annoyed her most of all. Weasley knew things. Somehow, he just knew them. It was as though he wasn't even trying, as though he instinctively understood what was going on even without the years of experience to back his claims, or the theoretical knowledge in place of that experience. Weasley was a generalist, just as Andreea was; he shouldn't just _know_ things.

"Yes," Alex said shortly.

"He had that salted ham for dinner, didn't he?" Weasley asked.

 _How the bloody hell does he even know that?_ Andreea gave a mental shake of her head, jotting down another note as the Fireball barked a sharp cry into the night air before releasing another plume of vibrant orange flame.

"Yes," Alex said again, a little more sharply.

"Huh." Weasley hummed to himself. "I thought that might work."

It hadn't even been Weasley's idea. In the entire week he'd been at the Sanctuary – a week. Only a week – he hadn't had the chance to work with the Fireball. He wasn't qualified to make such suggestions, nor did he have the credentials to know such things. How the hell did he know?

 _It must be the English blood,_ Andreea thought to herself. _Something about foreigners… we shouldn't have hired him._

"I've had a thought about this, actually," Weasley said.

Almost twitching, Andreea eyed him sidelong and saw Alex do the same. She hoped that her own stare didn't resemble a glare quite as much as Alex's did. "What?" Alex said so harshly that, had he directed the order to Andreea, she would have zipped her mouth shut immediately.

"Just that…" Weasley trailed off for a second. He pursed his lips, cocking his head so that the green-tinged shadows smeared and danced across his face, then gestured towards where the Fireball had paused, rocking back on his haunches and glaring at something Andreea couldn't see across his pen. "Don't you think his behaviours are sort of telling?"

Alex stared at him. Andreea stared too. She tapped her pencil again, fingers squeezing in a twitch of agitation, and opened her mouth to speak.

"He's clearly territorial," Weasley continued before she could get a word in. "Way more than most males would be at his age. His eating habits change with the moon, and so does his level of aggression. He's big for his age, too, and that barking sound? That's not normal for males, is it?"

"What would you know about _normal_ for Chinese Fireballs?" Alex asked. It wasn't a denial of Weasley's suggestion, but it it certainly wasn't lenient enough to recognise it as valid observations. Which they were, Andreea knew. She'd been making those very observations herself.

Weasley shrugged. "I've read things."

"Read things," Alex echoed flatly.

"Yeah. And not just about Fireballs, too. If you cross-compare species, the behaviours that the Fireball's showing is kind of indicative, isn't it? Like that."

He gestured across the pen, and Andreea watched as the Fireball sunk back further on his haunches, front limbs curling to his chest, and tipped his head back. He uttered another sharp bark, released a stream of fire, before lurching back onto all-fours and returning to his pacing. The trail of smoke floating in his wake breathed of his disgruntlement.

"Not all Fireballs do that," Weasley said. "Very few, actually. But don't the Opaleyes do the same? I just saw an old girl pull back into her Perch like that three days ago."

Andreea pursed her lips. She'd thought the same herself, but… but…

"Right," Alex said, drawing the word out. "A girl. Thus irrelevant."

"Not really," Weasley said.

"Males and females have different behavioural traits, Weasley, so even with cross-species comparisons you can't consider –"

"What if he was a female?"

Weasley's utterance drew Alex up short. His surprise even washed his glare aside. "What?"

Weasley gestured across the pen once more where the Fireball was swinging her head in exaggerated sweeps, blowing dust from the floor around her in plumes mirroring the smoke trailing from her nostrils. "If you put a female in an enclosure this small, and fed her only dead meat, and had her mixing only with other males, then wouldn't she be pretty angry too?"

Andreea stared. Alex stared too. He blinked, a muscle in his face twitching, and when he spoke it was in a stutter. "It's a bloody male, Weasley. In case you haven't noticed, there's certain physical characteristics of a dragon's body that make it a –"

"I'm just saying," Weasley said, holding up his hands in placation. "Just because he looks like a boy doesn't mean he necessarily thinks he is – does it?"

It didn't really make sense. Not to Andreea, and clearly not to Alex, either. But then, Weasley clearly thought differently. He acted differently, said things differently, and made different assumptions. His English blood; that was what Andreea attributed it to. His foolish English blood that, somehow, corresponded to her own ideas on the matter.

_I did think the behaviours were reminiscent, but…_

"It's just a thought," Weasley said, lowering his hands and folding his arms back across his chest. He shrugged again. "Maybe give it a go and see how it works?"

He left after that. After watching the Fireball a little longer and ignoring – or persisting in his obliviousness to – Alex's renewed glare, Weasley left them. His footsteps thunked heavily down the steps, muffling with distance, but even when he'd disappeared, Andreea stared after his retreating figure. Only slowly did she turn back to Alex.

He was staring at her, and she met his gaze with a resigned one of her own. "It's stupid," she said slowly. "I know it is, but do you think…?"

Alex sighed, his glare finally fading. He dropped his head for a moment, eyes closing as though wearied by the situation, before nodding. "It is stupid," he said. "But I'm prepared to try just about anything now."

It wouldn't work. Surely, it wouldn't. Providing a male dragon with female environment, relations, and diet, shouldn't work to improve its health and wellbeing. Dragons didn't think like that. But it was worth a shot. And after all, Weasley was –

Well, he was an Englishman, but he was strangely intuitive when it came to dragons. Andreea would admit that much at least. Maybe, just maybe, he was onto something.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading! Should you have any suggestions, any prompts or drabbles that you'd like to see or ficlets you'd like to see more from, leave a comment to let me know!


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